steamed whole fresh fish

hong kong is blessed with an abundance of seafood. cantonese people, in general, love to eat fish. they use the simplest technique to cook them, thus preserving its natural flavor as much as possible. when you have fish that was just caught in the morning, the last thing you want to do is mask the sweetness of the meat.

craving for seafood, we made a quick trip to our local wet market. our fishmonger recommended the sea bass. she said it was the catch of the day. without hesitation, she picked the best one for us. faster than we can count the money from our wallets, she descaled and gutted the whole fish in less than one minute. doing that ourselves might have taken us 10 minutes at least. once we arrived back home, all we had to do is rinse the fish, boil some water, and chop up green onions. practically no preparation at all.

whole fish 1-1.5 lbs
green onion 3 stalks
soy sauce 3 tbsp
sugar 1tsp

pour enough water into a wok to get it boiling and ready for steaming, turn heat on high
chop the green onions by first separating the white steams from the green leaves
place the white steams on a plate for steaming and set the fish top of the white stems (this helps the fish skin from sticking to the plate)
chop the remaining green onion leaves lengthwise, set aside
when the water is boiling hot, place the plate of fish inside the wok and steam
our fish was cooked in 9 min, but yours will vary slightly depending on the size of your fish. one way to tell is to lightly prick at the thickest part of the fish, if the meat is flaky, then it is done.
turn off the heat and sprinkle the green onion leaves on top of the fish
in a separate sauce pan, heat up 3 tbsp of oil
once the oil begins to smoke, drizzle it on top of the fish (caution this will result in some splattering)
in a bowl, combine 3 tbsp of soy sauce and 1 tsp of sugar, mix to completely dissolve the sugar
pour this sweetened soy sauce over the fish