Some ingredients found locally in Penang, Malaysia. This is a photo of cilipadi or bird’s eye chillies which is a type of very hot chilli that burns the tongue. The other is tumeric roots and tumeric leaves.
HOW TO CLEAN FISH
I bought this Patin Hitam for the first time. It is a freshwater fish reared in fish farms which most people shun because of the strong, fishy, ‘earthy’ smell. Over here in Malaysia, we mostly consume fishes from the seas as fishes are easily available as we are surrounded the oceans. Patin Hitam is known for its very smooth and oily flesh. The original Patin is very popular in the East Coast of Malaysia as these are caught from the rivers. However, over here on the West Coast, many of us do not consume patin very often. A large fish only cost me RM2.38 from Tesco, gutted and cleaned by the staff.
On an adventurous mood, I also ordered one salmon head which cost RM6.90. Again, salmon head is not consume especially by most Chinese because of the ‘fishy’ smell.
To get rid of the strong smell, I did the following:
1. Rub the fish and fish head with tamarind pulp.
2. Rub with a lot of salt.
3. Rinse with water.
4. Quick boil the fish and fish head in hot boiling water with some rock sugar.
5. Remove immediately and left to cool down under running tap water.
6. Put into cooking.
What did I cook? Recipe later on.
(Local readers may be wondering why I tend to explain things more than usual like quoting the state and country. It is to ‘attract’ web crawler. Bear with me, I need to drawn attention using these terms.)
