Friday, December 5, 2008

Red Snapper In Soy Sauce Gravy

Because I am not a fish lover, I am lousy at fish names and cooking fish dishes are limited to simple recipes. But since my kids take after their father who loves seafood, I do try to cook fish more often that I personally would do.

My kids prefer the steamed way of cooking as it is softer and juicier.

But when it comes to this kind of fish - which I think is called red snapper - steaming is a no-no for Eu. The smell and taste is too over-powering that she would not touch it.

A while ago I cooked them this fish deep fried before cooking it with some soy sauce gravy. Adding the small tomatoes was an afterthought but it was a good idea it gave the dish a salty and sourish combination that even I enjoyed it very much.

As for my girls verdict, they insist that I cook more next time!

Posted by Jewelle Tan at 03:59:44 | Permalink | Comments (1) »

Friday, January 11, 2008

KK : Gayang Restaurant

Because I am not a seafood fan, I am not impressed when folks kept saying how good the seafood are in Sabah. In fact, I will draw a little blank when asked where the best seafood eateries are in Sabah.

However, since my circle of family and friends are mostly seafood fans, I have had the pleasure of knowing about obscure-out-of-the-way-known-mostly-to-locals seafood eatery such as the Gayang Restaurant.

This place, which is along the route to 5 stars hotels such as the Nexus Karambunai and Shangri-La Rasa Ria is a good 20 mins drive from downtown Kota Kinabalu.

It’s located on a huge plot of land as they also rear their own fish and prawns. The whole restaurant is built on stilts on water and when we first arrived there in the afternoon, it was low tide and crabs were swarming the riverbed. I was told that you’d get lovely sunset here too.

Even though it’s way out of town, it’s popular with local diners. This is also one of the eatery which serves tourists and when we were there, 3-4 busloads of tourists also came for lunch.

On that day, we had the usual seafood fare of clams, fish, prawns, vegetable and one of my very few seafood favorite : soft-shelled crabs.

The meal was fine but the crab was sure expensive. That plate cost us RM45.

Posted by Jewelle Tan at 08:05:55 | Permalink | Comments (1) »

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Sultan Fish

Ever since I married into hubby’s family, I have been introduced into many types of food which I have never heard or tried before. So from now on, I am going to feature some of the unusual (for me) food which I think is special to the Brunei Chinese and/or Sarawak Chinese.

One of their family favorite is a particular large fish which they called the “Sultan Fish“.

This type of fish is according to my parents in law, quite expensive and presumably is an exclusive favorite for the Brunei and Sarawak Chinese as I have never heard of this fish in Sabah. Perhaps it’s called a different name there, could this is be the “jelawat” fish?

My mother in law usually cooks this very simply. Steamed with dried fungus and ginger. However, I don’t quite fancy this fish because it is full of bones and the kind of bones which are very fine and quite invisible to the eyes until they poked you in the mouth.

Hubby knew of my terror with the bones and always very kindly find me parts with minimal bones and it was only recently that I started to enjoy eating this fish.

And I was surprised to finally discover that although it has the freshwater fish smell (mud), the flesh is very sweet.

I think if you like seafood and especially fish, you would like this particular one too.

Posted by Jewelle Tan at 13:55:41 | Permalink | Comments Off