Big Fish, Pink Fish, Fried Fish, Good Fish

Ok, I like to cook, I like to eat; Cooking is much more fun, but I eat what I make so the real gastronomica esoterica is right out. That doesn't stop the exploration though, and that's moving into a new phase that is all about cooking like the Chinese do. Wait one...tangentially, I don't like the term 'Chinese food'. You can hardly bound their cuisine with the illusory meme 'Chinese'...it's the equivalent of saying 'European food'. Anyway, I recently got that wok up there straight out of Guangzhou (via some nice folks at the Wok Shop in San Fran...Grant Ave, that's legit), seasoned it just so...which leads me to:

So I went to the Fresh Market yesterday and picked up some fresh shitakes (from Arkansas, cool) ginger, scallion…and a big-ass red snapper, whole. They were just putting it out for sale from the truck that had just come from the airport. It was clear-eyed, red-gilled, and smelled great...the best a landlocked fella can do for la perche rouge. I had my monger scale it, clean it, and use some tin snips to chop out the gills (bitter)…then off to the liquor store for sherry.

Long story short: I salted it, scored it, garnished it with aromatics, sprinkled it with sherry, dredged it in flour and cornstarch, and deep fried it Shanghai-style in my wok. It did not suck. A lot of fish and hefty on price (it was banquet-ready, very pretty though I did lose the tail, clumsy gwai loh), but I was experimentin’. I can move down to fresh freshwater breeds with good result I suspect; trout I think, plentiful and not quite so devastating to my wallet…though I’ll miss that big-fish cheek and chin meat.