Strawberry jam in sweet and sour sauce

After making the glutinous rice balls with strawberry syrup, I kept the excess syrup in the fridge because I planned on making the dessert again. I will but I’ll have to make a new batch of strawberry syrup again. The excess I kept in the fridge went into something else — into sweet and sour sauce, believe it or not.

Is that asparagus on top of the fish fillets? No, they’re stalks of spring garlic and you can refer to an earlier entry for more details. You might also want to know that I no longer thicken my sweet and sour sauce with starch. I just updated a six-year-old sweet and sour fish entry with the text and photo from my May 20 Feast Asia column in Manila Standard Today.

So sorry there are no step-by-step photos for this recipe. My younger daughter Alex came home with three classmates at 10.30 a.m. (half-day today) and I had to finish cooking lunch in record time.

Serves 6.

Ingredients:

750 g. of fish fillets (I used sole), cut into bite-size pieces and seasoned with salt and pepper
1/2 c. of flour
2 c. of cooking oil for deep frying

For the sweet and sour sauce with strawberry jam:

1 c. of rice vinegar
1 c. of shaved palm sugar (or dark brown sugar)
½ c. of strawberry jam thinned with about 2 tbsps. of water
½ tsp. of salt

For the garnish:
a small carrot, peeled and thinly sliced or cut into matchsticks
1 c. of spring garlic, cut into 2-inch lengths
1 onion, peeled and thinly sliced

Make the sweet and sour sauce. Place the vinegar and sugar in a small pan and set over medium heat. Cook without stirring until the sugar dissolves. Swirl the pan and boil over medium heat for 15 to 25 minutes or until syrupy. Add the strawberry jam and salt during the last five minutes of cooking.

Heat the cooking oil in a wok or frying pan.

Toss the seasoned fish fillets in flour, shake off the excess and deep fry in batches until golden brown and crisp on the outside. Drain on paper towels. Transfer to a serving plate.

Add the carrot, spring garlic and onion to the hot oil. Cook for 30 seconds then scoop out. Drain well. Scatter on top of the fish fillets.

Pour the sauce over and around the fish fillets.

Serve at once.