After I advised Cecilia Chiang—maybe an important Chinese language chef in American historical past—that I used to be hungry, the very last thing I anticipated was for her to microwave fish for dinner.
In spite of everything, Cecilia was an icon. She opened The Mandarin in 1961, a Chinese language banquet-style restaurant in San Francisco, the primary of its variety, the place she launched a Northern model of Chinese language delicacies to America. At the moment, most diners had been solely conversant in the rather more frequent Southern Chinese language cooking out of Chinatown. However quickly sufficient, she grew to become a bastion of the kind of elegant, exacting Chinese language cooking that cooks like James Beard, Julia Baby, Alice Waters, and Jeremiah Tower got here to be taught from. And although she handed in 2020, her legacy lives on.
That is all to say: If probably the most well-respected cooks in American culinary historical past used the microwave to cook dinner fish, so do you have to.
After I was visiting Cecilia at her condominium in San Francisco, she stuffed the fish with ginger and scallions, positioned it on high of two chopsticks resting on a rimmed plate, and stretched a bathe cap excessive, earlier than she microwaved it on excessive. The consequence was a succulent, completely steamed piece of fish. It was pristine, clear, and actually, form of mind-boggling.
In contrast to in a standard steamer, which cooks the meals from the skin in, a microwave kindles warmth inside out, via vibrations of the water molecules inside the ingredient. Due to this inner agitation, components cooked in a microwave—together with a fillet of fish—are inclined to cook dinner extra evenly, extra shortly, and extra cleanly.
Each methods, although, spotlight the inherent traits of the fish: its sweetness, its savoriness. Which means, they take away the disagreeable qualities that may creep up when cooking fish: a metallic gaminess or muddy mush. It’s a win-win both manner, however ever since Cecilia launched me to the microwave methodology, I’ve turned to it time and again in occasions of expediency.
Step one of microwaving fish is probably an important: Choose the proper fish. In Hong Kong, we’re fortunate to have our choose of a cornucopia of recent and saltwater fishes of various textures and flavors. Some are extra gelatinous and stick with your lips. Others are waxy and flake extra simply. Some are deep and brinier in taste, others mild and candy. My favorites again dwelling are humpback grouper, threadfin, and striped mullet.
Within the absence of entry to high quality fishmongers, any form of recent, white-fleshed fish works nicely for this method. It might be most conventional to steam complete fish, however fillets cook dinner sooner and slot in microwaves. Sea bass, flounder, ocean perch, and crimson snapper are all nice selections, round a pound in weight. Attempt to get it completely descaled, however skin-on, because the pores and skin is the place a lot of the collagen is, which when cooked will develop into pretty, slippery, and subtly sticky.
However you possibly can’t simply throw the fish within the microwave and hope for the very best. The fish first must be dry-cured with what might look like an extreme quantity of salt and sugar. This attracts out moisture from the floor, concentrating the flavour and locking within the agency texture. After the remedy, rinse to take away extra salt and to scrub off any funk.
