Steamed whole fish in olive oil

Simple and easy. Geez, it was good! From the aroma that first permeated the kitchen and then the dining room… but the best things were the short cooking time (40 minutes including preparation), the readily available ingredients (these are staples in most pantries), the fancy-free procedure and my family’s appreciation.

My kids and I were watching a Disney TV movie last night called “Eddie’s One Million Dollar Cookout” about a boy torn between his love for cooking and his father’s expectations that he become an exceptional baseball player. He was good at both. But he explained his love for cooking this way, “I like creating something out of nothing.” How true. Like art, cooking is about self-expression. Food is the medium. That little piece of dialogue was playing inside my head all day and I was inspired to create something new for dinner tonight.

This dish was inspired by a sauce for white chicken. In Chinese cooking, white chicken means steamed chicken. My father used to serve white chicken with a special sauce–a mixture of peanut oil, finely chopped ginger and salt. I didn’t have peanut oil. But there was a bottle of olive oil on my kitchen shelf. Olive oil is traditionally used with garlic. The question inside my head was would it be good with ginger as well? No harm in trying. I went a step further. I will not only use ginger, I will use garlic and add plenty of chopped parsley as well. What you see in the photo is the cooked dish that resulted from my little experiment.

Ingredients :

1 whole fish (I used maya-maya but you can use lapu-lapu or some other white fleshy fish), about 1 kilo in weight, scaled, gutted and cleaned
salt and pepper
3 tbsps. of finely chopped ginger
3 tbsps. of finely chopped garlic
3/4 c. of olive oil
2 tbsps. of finely chopped parsley

Cooking procedure :

On both sides, make a cut along the back of the fish about half an inch deep. Season the fish with salt and pepper, inside and out.

Mix together the ginger, garlic, olive oil, parsley and about a teaspoon of salt. The mixture will be rather thick.

Place a teaspoon of the olive oil mixture inside the cavity of the fish. Take another teaspoon and rub on one side of the fish. Lay the fish on a heat-proof dish, oiled side down. Rub the other side with the olive oil mixture. Pour the rest over the fish.

Steam the fish over simmering water for 30 minutes.

Serve at once. Wasn’t that simple and easy? Try it. It was really good.