Grilled Pork Belly with Char Siu and Coffee Sauce Glazed Recipe (with Indonesian Genuine Wild Civet Coffee Essence)

Grilled Pork Belly with Chinese Barbeque Coffee Char Siu Sauce Marinated and Glazed

Grilled Pork Belly with Char Siu and Coffee Sauce Glaze Recipe

Grilled pork belly marinated with coffee char siu sauce recipe is a fushion of chinese char siu barbeque sauce and sticky honey coffee glaze sauce.  Char siu (Chinese: 叉燒 caa siu, literally means “fork-roast”. Char siu also known as chasu, cha siu, cha shao, char siew, babi panggang merah is a popular Cantonese cuisine that marinated pork meat with aromatic reddish sweet seasoning then grilled until throughly cooked. Char siu pork is one of the components of siu mei or  roasted meat combo that used to be served in Cantonese restaurant.  The common halal version of char siu usially using chicken, duck or beef brisket. There’s so many ready to use char siu sauce in a bottle like Lee Kum Kee brand, you can use it if you don’t to mush effort to made it from scratch, use about 8 tbsp  instant char siu sauce and mix it with  about 1/4 cup coffee essence for this recipe.

Recipe Barbequed Pork Belly with Char Siu Honey and Coffee Glaze Sticky Sauce

This honey and coffee glazed barbequed pork belly is got a red shinny sweet and sticky glazed from the caramelized honey within the sauce, bursting fragrance and aromatic flavour from the civet coffee essence and five spice powder. The dish not that special without fruity and tangy sensation from the civet coffee essence. Beside giving extra ummami flavour and aromas,  the coffee essence infact act as tenderizer. the acid also naturally break the protein bond within the meat when you using it to marinade the meat before put it in the griller. Using coffee with your barbeque sauce is quite tricky, too much of it would made your barbeque sauce taste bitter while using less than needed would not given any benefits into it, so use it wisely, 2-4 tbsp for 1 kg of meat is works with my taste buds.

Coffee Glazed Pork Belly with Char Siu Style Barbeque Marinade

Basically, i just mix a reddish sweet char siu sauce with brewed dark civet coffee essence and using it to marinade the pork  belly ovenight before cooking it. I’m using honey, five-spice powder, light and dark soy sauce, hoisin sauce, chinese rice wine and angkak a.k.a yeast rice or red fermented recipe for giving the natural red color. I’m using angkak or red yest rice for many kind of recipe mostly to coloring roast such as my Homemade Roasted Peking Duck Recipe with Crispy Crackling Skin and Chinese Style Roasted Squab or Pigeon. You can purchased the angkak a.k.a red yeast in any chinese groceries or medicine shop nearby your place. The starch within the red yeast rice made your marinade thicken once you cooked it and you didn’t need to add ony of starch to adjust the consistence of your sauce. I’m using 3 tbsp of wild Indonesian civet coffee that brewed with 1 cup of hot water than simmerred until reduced quarter it’s originally volume.

Skewerred Grilled Pork Belly with Char Siu and Coffee Sauce Glaze

Juicy Grilled Pork Belly, with Sweet, Tangy and Aromatic Char Siu and Coffee Glazed

Making this chinese style char siu and coffee marinated pork belly is so easy. First you choose the meaty layered  pork belly from the butcher, pork butt or even baby back ribs will be good too if you want your char siu pork less fatty. Cut the pork belly into 5 cm long with 1- 1.5 inch thickness. The pork belly then marinated overnight in the fridge with the brewed coffee essence and homemade char siu sauce .  I also forked the pork belly meat to made ths marinade penetrated even better inside the meat. Firstly in the morning, i put the marinated pork belly in non sticky pan and bring it all to slowly boil and cover it with lid. Let the pork belly stewed in the civet coffee and char siu sauce for about 10-15 minutes. You may look the marinate looks more red and the sauce consistency is thicken. Right after the pork belly is cool enough to handle, pierced the pork belly with two bamboo skewer within the pork belly to made it easier to handle or flipped around on the griller.

Chinese Char Siu Pork Belly with Deep Fried Mantou Buns

Chinese roast pork used to eaten with carbs, whether inside a steamed bun or mantau/cha siu bao, homemade soft chinese pancakes,with noodles/cha siu mein, or with steaming hot rice/cha siu fan. I preferto served my coffee char siu pork belly inside a homemade deep fried mantou buns and add some jullienned greens veggies like carrot, scallion, and mung bean sprout and local aromatic herbs called  daun kenikir. To enhanced the flavour, nothing better than chopped birds eye chilles over it.

Coffee Marinated Grilled Pork Belly

Finger Licking Good Barbequed Pork belly with Coffee Char Siew Sauce

This coffee glazed grilled pork isn’t special if i didn’t use genuin wild Indonesian civet coffee that i brought from my hometown, Muara Dua, South Sumatra Province. Civet coffee or locally known as kopi luwak is a coffee have been eaten, digested and defecated by the Asian palm civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus). Sounds icky, but wait until you taste it and know that it’s got a title the most expensive coffee in the world with more than 400 USD/kg price tag. Genuin Indonesian wild civet coffee is real when it’s collected from wild civet droppping. If you found Indonesian civet coffee that tagged less than 200 USD per kilo , it must be civet coffee comes from cruelty farm raised and batterry caged civet that feed with cofee beans.  The local civet coffee hunter told me that the unsuffecient ammount of supply with fluctuative stock while the demand is always high rockets the wild civets coffee price tag. Local wild civet cofee hunter rewarded with 30-40 USD/kg and then local collector used to sold it to international trader for at least 200-400 USD/kg after washed from the dirt and shit, hulled and then sun drained it. The biggest toke or local civet coffee colletor in my hometown can fullfilling the minimum 100 kg quota for about 3-6 months depending on the season.

Indonesian Wild Civet Coffee a.k.a Kopi Luwak Asli Indonesia

Then why Indonesian wild civet coffee is so special ? The wild civet eats the best qualities and the ripest coffee berries, then the fleshy pulp digested while the fermentation did the magic to the coffee bean;  proteolytic enzymes seep into the beans, break some protein chains and shorter peptides and more free amino acids and made the coffee taste even better. Luckily, my father’s friend is a genuin wild civet coffee trader is too kind to take me with his civet cofee hunter crews to foraging the prescious poops . Hopefully, i’m gonna post about it as soon as possible.  The hillarious and life time experiments climbing up hill then down hill for several times in traditional coffee plantation looking for a prescious poop.  Right before i’m gonna said good bye to the crews, the  leader of the civet coffee hunter was given me about 1 kg of our wild civet coffee for free (HALLELUYA!!! HALLELUYA!!! HALLELUYA!!! themed song playing). Eversince i’m to scared to processed it by myself, i ask the local coffee store to washed, hulled and then roast it for me. You won’t believe how good it’s smells while the coffee shops employee roast the beans in a traditional rotisserie metal tong that filled with some beach sand and then rotate it over mangoo wood flames.

Resep Sate Babi Panggang Manis Bumbu Merah Char Siu

In Indonesia, we used to called char siu as babi panggang merah literrary grilled pork with red spice/reddish pork roast simply because the pork roast got red color. Others called it sate babi manis or skewerred pork with sweet  barbeque seasoning.  Among batakness descent, we used simplified char siu as babi panggang cina or chinese style roasted pork, it’s a common topping for bakmi Pematang Siantar; a curled tiny noodle served from Pematang Siantar region in North Sumatra Province. Otherwise, in chinese Indonesian community, char siu used to be served over nasi campur or  hainamese-style mixed rice

Grilled Pork Belly with Chinese Coffee and CHar Siu Sauce Marinated and Glazed Recipe:

• 1 kg pork belly, cut 3 inches long and 1 inch thick
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 cup water for stewing the pork belly

Char Siu or Char Siew Coffee Marinade/BBQ sauce Recipe:

• 3 tbsp wild civet coffee powder, brewed with 1 cup hot water then simmer until thicken into quarter , strained with fine sieve, set aside
• 2 tbsp honey or maltose
• 1 tbsp five spice powder
• 2 tbsp angkak or powderred chinese red yeast rice,
• 2 tbsp light soy sauce
• 4 tbsp chinese cooking wine
• 1 tsp dark soy sauce
• 2 tbsp hoisin sauce*optional
• 2 tbsp oyster sauce*optional
• 1 whole star anise*optional
• ½tbsp salt
• 1 tbsp garlic powder

How to Made Grilled Pork Belly with Chinese Coffee and CHar Siu Sauce Marinated and Glazed Recipe

• Mix all the coffee char siu barbeque sauce in a glass bowl
• Slice the pork belly along the grain to 1 inch thick slices and mix it well with the charsiu coffee marinade sauce

Marinade The Pork Belly with Civet Coffee Essence and Char Siu Sauce

• Cover the mixture with cling wrap and let it marinade overnight in the fridge
• Firstly in the morning, put  the cofee marinated pork belly in a non stick pan, add 1 cup water and bring it to slowly boil, cover it with lid and turning once after 5 minutes then continue to stewed it until all liquid completely evaporated, set aside.

Slowly Boil The Marinated Pork Belly Until All Liquid Evaporated

• Once the pork belly is cool enough to handle, put the pork belly in two wooden skewer

Skewerred Char Siu and Cofee Sauce Pork Belly

• Put the skewered coffee char siu sauce pork belly over medium low heat griller and flip it several times until it throughly cooked and the fat it’s rendered and the meat is still moist
• Served the coffee char siu barbequed pork belly with steaming hot rice or chinese mantou buns with jullienned veggies.

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Spicy Cheese, Bacon and Basil Stuffed Squash Blossoms

Deep Fried Cheese Stuffed Squash or Pumpkin Blossom with a Twist of Spicy Chilli, Savoury Bacon and  Refreshing Lemon Basil Recipe.

Pumpkin Squash Blossom, Male and Female Blossoms with Baby Pumpkin Fruit

How to cook the pumpkin blossom is the question once i saw a plenty of it on my grandma’s garden. Once i googling stuffed pumpkin blossom, the result comes out as stuffed squash blossom. What the heck @#%@$^#%, it comes to a question what is the different beetween pumpkin and squash blossoms.  Well, to keep it simple, pumpkin is one type of squash and squash is generally refers to four species from genus Cucurbita. Genus  Cucurbita including the species of squash, pumpkin or gourd depending on species, variety and local parlance, are grown for their edible fruits and seeds. So, to make it clearer, both squash and pumpkin belong to the same family (the cucurbitaceae). A pumpkin is a type of squash.

Pumpkin Squash Blossom, Male and female Flower with Baby Pumpkin Fruit

All part of the pumpkin plant is edible, i mean all of it, including the blossom. Most of the pumpkin or squash blossom recipe using only the male flower. You can diffeciate the male and female pumpkin blossom by observing the area directly below the flower. Male pumpkin blossom should be a long wiry stem that connects the blossom directly to the vine;  it’s usually several inches long, without any swelling at the base of the flower. Look for a shorter, thicker flower stalk and a small, round swelling just below the flower base, it’s called the baby pumkin that waiting to grow.  Once you’ve harvest the pumpkin blossom, wash it gently inside and out under cool water. Soaking in a big bowl of water may damage the delicate blossoms if kept wet for too long. Use that method with caution. Remove the stems and stamen before stuffing. and use same day for best results. To store the pumpkin blossom, right before you wash it, rolled it up in a lint-free cloth and put it in the fridge and then wash it prior to cook.

I told you before that most of the pumpkin or squash blossom recipe using only the male flowers. It’s simply because the male pumpkin flower gonna be wilded in one or three days after it’s blossom, while the polinated female blossom gonna be grown up into pumpkin fruit. Well, sometimes life is a simply sucks, to honoured the male pumpkin flower; The farmers used to ended the blossoms in their plates. This gender discrimination made me curious even more about the female pumpkin flower, especially the polinated ones with the baby pumpkin buds under the yellow petals. Don’t tell my grandma that i’ve picked the blossom with baby pumpkin blossom too, otherwise; she probably smacked my fuc*ing head off.

The baby pumpkin fruit bud in the female pumpkin blossom is the highlight of this snack for me. It’s  got a velvety sweet flavour with a soft texture . I gotta told you that afterall i’m not feeling guilty at all to harvesting the female pumpkin blossom. One of the trick to  make sure your baby pumpkin buds throughly cooked, poke it several times with fork to make the heat penetrated it perfectly.

Cheesey Stuffed Pumpkin Squash Blossoms!!!

I used to stuffed any vegetables with meat and i was planning to stuffed the squash blossoms with somekind seasoned minced chicken or pork meat, but eversince i noticed that i didn’t had any of it in my fridge, i checked out my fridge one more time and found lemon basil leaves, bacon, The Laughing Cow cubed cheese, remaining few spoonfull of ricotta and feta cheese and some leftover Roasted Pumpkin from making Pumpkin Risotto Recipe. Binggo!!!, i decided to cleaned up my fridge and mix all of it and stuffed it good in the pumpkin blossoms, but not to forget to  add chilli flakes, lots of it to suits my Indonesian licking.  I’m using Basic Beer Batter Recipe  for coating the stuffed squash blossoms and then dredging it in panko breadcrumb right before deep frying it.

 

Deep Fried Cheese Stuffed Squash or Pumpkin Blossom:

Ingredients:

• 10 or more large pumpkin squash blossoms
• 3-4 cups vegetable oil for deep frying

Pumpkin Blossom Spicy Stuffing Recipe

• 1/2 cup Roasted Pumpkin
• 1 box 24  Laughing Cow Cubes Cheese Spread,  chopped
• 2 tablespoonfulls of ricotta cheese
• 2 tablespoonfulls of feta cheese
• 1 large egg yolk
• 1/4 cup finely chopped lemon basil leaves
• 2 slice bacon, finely chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, finely minced
• 1 tbsp chilli flakes

Basic Beer Batter Tempura Recipe:

• 1/4 can VERY COLD beer
• 1 egg white
• 2/3 cup all-purpose flour
• salt and pepper to taste

 

How to Make Cheese Stuffed Squash or Pumpkin Blossom Fritter :

• Stir together the stuffing ingredients, no need to add any salt at all because it’s elements is quite salty
  

• Carefully open each blossom and fill with about 1-2 tablespoonfull  filling, gently twisting end of blossom to enclose filling.
  

• Dip the stuffed pumpkin blossoms in the basic beer batter to thinly coat.

• Dredge the beer batterred stuffed pumpkin blossoms in panko breadcrumbs

• Tossing  the breaded stuffed pumpkin blossoms to remove the excess breadcrumbs

• Heat the  oil  in a 10-inch heavy skillet, fry the coated and stufffed pumpkin blossoms for about 1 minutes

• Turning the breaded pumpkin blossom once and pierced the baby pumpkin fruit buds in the female blossom  with fork to make it throughly cooked and let it fry until perfectly golden brown.
• Transfer with tongs to paper towels to drain.
• Coat and fry remaining blossoms. Serve it with chili and tomato sauce.

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Homemade Peking Duck Recipe with Crispy Crackling Skin, Served with Homemade Soft Chinese Pancake

Homemade Roasted Peking Duck with Crispy and Crackling Skin

Peking duck is the most popular duck dish in chinese cuisine around the world. Roasted Peking Duck is prized for its thin, crispy and crackling skin. Authentic versions of peking duck used to be dish served or carved the skin and little meat, skillfully sliced by the cook in front of the diners. The rest of the meat is eaten with scallion, cucumber and hoisin sauce with homemade chinese pancakes rolled around the fillings.

Homemade Version Roasted Peking Duck

Homemade Roasted Peking Duck Recipe is quite an effort with hectic and prescise step by step preparation. All the effort worthed when you’ve making your homemade peking duck that mostly away cheaper than chinese restaurant along the fact that you’ve could adjust the test of your homemade peking duck. Once you’ve try making peking duck  very on kitchen,  it’s actually not really that hard, i even adjust the bycycle pump that used to plump the duck skin with ball pump as long as you can lifted up and seperate the skin from the meat. I’ve try  this method for making Crispy Roasted Chicken with Herbs Butter Recipe, ant it’s turn out successfully.

Crispy and Crackling Homemade Roasted Peking Duck

Peking Duck with Moist, Aromatic and Tender Meat

How to pump air under the duck skin is quite tricky, you can’t skip this step if you wanted your peking duck crispy. Air is pumped to separate the skin from the fat and let the fat under the skin renderred and being “fried” out the skin until crisp. The trick is you put your pump tips under the duck skin without pierching it’s meat through the neck cavity, seal the airway to make sure all the air from the pump entering the soft tissue underneath the duck skin. Once the duck skin is raised up, you may push or slightly palpate the duck skin to distribute the air underneath the duck skin. After one side, flip out the duck and doing the same treatment with another side.

Pump The Peking Duck with Balloon Pump from The Neck Skin

I like my roasted peking duck meat is tasty, quite spicy with  nice aromatic, moist and fork tender. Sometimes the chef in the chinese restaurant is too focus on the crispy skin highlight and let the meat overcooked and dry. Honestly, i think it’s a kinda unnecessary waste . That’s why one of my friend who is a junior executive chef in famous chinese restaurant in Palembang told me that i need to spiced up the duck cavity and then seal it good. He recommended to rub salt throught out the skin and cavity and then dust the cavity with a generous amount of bumbu ngohiang or chinese five spice powder, sliced ginger, chopped scallion and few cloves of crushed garlic. Once you’ve stuffed the duck cavity, seal it with bamboo skewer or you can sew it with butcher twines. The cavity stuffing gives a nice aromatic flavour and keep the moisture in the cavity, then the peking duck would be flavoursome, moist and tender. Never forget to discard the oil gland (Uropygial Gland) from the duck tail since it’s had stink aromas, but you should keep the pope’s nose since it’s quite meaty there.

After the duck skin being pumped or blown out and the cavity is well sealed, now it’s the glazing step.  The duck is glazed with soy sauce, maltose and chinese red yeast rice or angkak as natural coloring agent mixture.  You can purchase the red rice in almost chinese groceries store nearby your place, if you can’t find any, instead you can simply use food coloring  and adjust the consistency of the glazing mixture with cornstarch.  While the duck is hung, the duck is glazed with the boiling glazing mixture until the duck skin is thighten, and the duck skin changing it’s color into nice reddish brown.

The Peking Duck is Glazed Until The Duck’s Skin is Thighten and The Skin Color is Nice Reddish Brown

Drying out the duck skin is the next crucial step. You can expose the glazed peking duck with blowing fan for a couple of minutes then let the duck stand for 24 hours until the skin is totally dry in a dry cold place. This steps is sounds easy to do if you live in a cold climates, but if you live in tropical climates like me; letting the duck standing in room temperature for 24 hours may iniciate the bad bacteria and fungus spores to ruined out your duck. That’s why i suggest to hung dry your duck in your fridge. Instead, you can laid it down in a shallow and hollow metal rack to allow the air circulated all over the duck skin, but i more like to hung out my duck in my fridge door, just like what i did to dry cure my Homemade Bresaola Recipe and Homemade Duck Prosciutto.

The glazed peking duck is hung to dry in a fridge door!

The peking duck skin is totally dry and it’s ready to be roasted!

Peking Duck is traditionally roasted in either a closed oven or hung oven, but eversince my oven is to small for that, i used my shallow and hollow baking rack with a tray underneath.  Preheat the oven to 170ºC/325ºF. Place the duck in a roasting tray and put it in the oven for about 2 minutes. You should discard the excess water and oil dripping from the duck every 10 minutesor your duck is steamed instead of roasted. This will make the skin go wonderfully crispy. Generally, after a 40 minutes it will be perfect,the leg meat will pull off the bone and the skin will be wonderfully crisp. You don’t always need to, but I sometimes turn the heat up to 200ºC/400ºF/for 5 or more minutes until it’s really crispy and cracking.

Shining Roasted Peking Duck, The Oli Gland is Totally Removed from the Duck’s Tail

Serving  your homemade roasted peking duck is quite optional; you can eat it either with steaming hot rice, steamed buns or mandarin pancake.To made youer live easier, you can buying a couple of packs of pre-made chienese pancakes which you can place in a steamer or microwave and slowly steam until nice and hot. But eversince i’m too lazy to work out my butt to the supermarket, i like to made the chinese pancake from scratch. The basic recipe is quite simple, just like my Homemade Tortilla Recipe, but you just recplace the water with boiling water.

Roasted Peking Duck, Chinese or Mandarin Pancake with Condiments and Vegetables

Once the duck has cooled a little bit, use two forks to cut out the meat off the carcass and place it in a plate. You can served it with plenty of greens and condiment sauce. i prefer using sweet bean paste sauce a.k.a hoisin sauce and spicy chilli sauce. I also add plenty of veggies within the roasted peking duck and pancake roll; thinly sliced scallion and cucumber, thinly shaved carrot, baby romain lettuce hearth and some pea sprout.

Nic Stuffing for Chinese Peking Duck Pancake Roll

 I would love to tell you the way how i roll out my chinese pancake with my thinly sliced roasted peking duck. Starting by spreading the hoisin sauce and some spicy chilli sauce in the middle of the pancake and followed by placing the vegetables and the sliced roasted peking duck. After that i fold the base of the pancake and then fold out with slightly rolleing movement the pancake horizontally and let the other side of the pancake exposing the goodness inside.

Step by step instruction how to wrap the roasted peking duck with chinese pancake

Enjoy Your Roasted Peking Duck Wrapped in Chinese Pancake!

Another Shoots of Roasted Peking Duck Wrapped in Chinese Pancakes!

 Homemade Peking Duck Recipe with Step by Step Instructions:

Ingredients:

• One 2- 2.5 kg Peking Duck
• Salt for rubbing

Peking Duck Stuffing Recipe:

• few slice ginger
• 1 bunch of roughly chopped scallions

Peking Duck Glazing Recipe:

• 4 cups Water
• 1 tablespoon Salt
• 1 cup Chinese Cooking Wine/dry sherry
• 1/2 cups Rice Vinegar
• 1/4 cups Red Yeast Rice powder or Angkak (replace with 1 tbsp red food coloring plus dissolved 2 tablespoons cornstarch)
• 1/2 cup Maltose or Honey
• 2 tbsp Chinese Five Spice Powder
• Few slices of Ginger
• 1 roghly chopped Scallion

How To Make Homemade Roasted Crispy Peking Duck:

1. Making The Peking Duck Glaze:

•  Place the water into a large wok pan, add the chinese five spice powder, ginger and scallion, bring it  to boil and let it boil gently for about 10 minutes
• Strain the mixture through a fine sieve and discard the solid ingredients, put the liquid back into the large wok
• Dissolved the rest of the peking duck glazing ingredients and keep stirring and bring it to boil, turn off the heat and set aside

2. Preparing the Peking Duck

• Clean duck inside out and wipe dry
• Discard the oil gland from the tail and cut the wing’s tips and the duck feet
• Rub  the duck all over  with salt
  
• Pump the skin to seperate it from the meat with bicycle or balloon pump from the neck skin
• Put the stuffing ingredients inside the ducks cavity and seal it good with  bamboo skewer
• Bring the glazing ingredients to boil
• Hung the duck and then pour the glazing mixture all over the duck skin until it thighten out and the skin color is rurn into nice reddish brown
• Expose the glazed peking duck with blowing fan for about 30 minutes and let it stand for another 24 hours in a cold and dry place (i placed the duck in my fridge)
• When the duck duck is really dry, preheat oven to 170ºC, put the duck in a shallow and hollow baking rack and make sure the roasted duck dripping can’t touch the skin
• Let the peking duck roasted for about 10 minutes and discard or spoon out the dripping from the tray and continue to roast another 30 minutes (discard the dripping every 10 minutes)
• Increase the heat to 200ºC/400ºF and let it roasted for another 5 minutes until the skin is very-very crispy
• When your homemade peking duck is done, carved it and served it with the homemade pancake and other condiments

Homemade Chinese Pancake Recipe for Roasted Peking Duck:

Ingredients

• 450 grams plain flour
• 310 ml boiling water
• 1 teaspoon vegetable oil
• 1/4 cup sesame oilplus 1 tbsp cornstarch
  

Method

1. Stir the boiling water into the flour, add the oil and knead into a firm dough. Cover with a damp towel or cling film and set aside 30 mins. Knead dough 5 mins until smooth.
2. Divide and roll into three cylinders, cut each cylinder into 8-10. Roll each piece of dough into a ball and press into a flat disc with the palm of your hand.
3. Dip one side of the dough  disc with sesame oil then place another dough disc on top of it. Using a rolling pin, flatten each pair of discs into a 6 inch pancake. Heat an ungreased frying pan over high heat, then reduce the heat to low and place the pairs of pancakes, on at a time, into the pan.
4. Turn over when brown spots start to appear on the underside. When the second side is cooked, lift the pancakes out and carefully peel them apart.
5. Fold each pancake in half with the cooked side facing inwards, and set aside under a damp cloth. For 10 mins before serving, steam the pancakes in a steamer over simmering water.

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Chinese Style Steamed Mouse Grouper Fish with Soy Sauce, Ginger, Scallion and Cilantro (Resep Ikan Kerapu Bebek/Tikus Tim Hongkong)

Steamed Mouse Grouper Fish with Mushrooms, Soy Sauce, Ginger, Scallion and Cilantro

Recipe Chinese  Style Steamed Mouse Grouper with Soy Sauce, Ginger, Scallion and Cilantro or simplified as Hongkong or Cantonese Style Steamed Humpback Grouper. I want to apologize first for Dentist Chef reader before i writing any further recipe; it’s been a while since my last post. I was so busy about my clinical requirements, besides in fact  that  i’ve been moved to South Sumatra Dental and Oral Hospital (Rumah Sakit Gigi dan Mulut Sumatera Selatan). I guess the phrase “passion will find it’s way” isn’t as easy as is sounds. I realized it’s hard to find a way to posting a recipe between the daily patients, clinical reports, case presentation and stuffs, so then i need to put myself 100% into it and left blogging aside.

Live Mouse Grouper or Humpback Grouper Swimming in a Pond and Sneaky Pearl Lobster

Humpback grouper (Cromileptes altivelis) 0r mouse grouper, kerapu tikus in Bahasa Indonesia or 老鼠斑 in cantonese panther grouper,and also called in barramundi cod in Australia. Mouse grouper  is a reef  fish which can grows up to 70 cm. The mouse grouper shape compressed laterally and is relatively high. This stocky and strange visual effect is accented by its concave profile and its elongated snout which gives it a humpbacked appearance.

Resep Tim Ikan Kerapu Tikus atau Ikan Kerapu Bebek Kukus ala Hongkong

 Tim Ikan Kerapu Tikus ala Hongkong or Ikan Kerapu Bebek Kukus Kecap was the first ever mouse grouper i had in Bandar Djakarta Green Bay Pluit Seafood Restaurant. The live mouse grouper which swimming with it’s head facing down in a tank was tagged about IDR. 930.00)/kg (93 USD/kg). Pretty damn expensive for a sea creatures, not to mention that you charged extra IDR 20.000 (2USD) for cooking it. Right after you pick one of the mouse grouper from the tank and weighted it outm the restaurant will confirm the price and then right before they cooked it, the waitress used to come to your table to reconfirm  about the price, The mouse grouper was steamed in a simple soy sauce and sesame oil base broth, topped generously with chopped cilantro leaves and served with a dip of black vinegar, ginger and chopped bird eye chillies. Sounds boring, but trust me, your taste buds will apreciate the sweetness and the soft texture of the steamed live humpback grouper, eventhough in fact the chef cooked the fish a tad overcooked, yet it still taste superb when i eat it without any dipping sauce.

Beautifull Dotted Mouse Grouper or Spotted Humpback Grouper (It Changes Colori into Darker when It’s Stress)

Happily Guilty when I Finely Had Mouse Grouper in My Very Own Plate

Mouse grouper it’s famous high end expensive food for steaming fish in Hongkong, Malaysia and also Singapore.  Even the  flesh texture of the mouse grouper is not as firm and succulent as seven star grouper or chinese silver pomfret which is commonly used in Steamed Fish in Teochew Style Recipe, nothing compare mouse grouper natural sweetness. The secret recipe for a fine taste of simple chinese style steaming fish is within the ingredients and the whole processes. The fish must be fresh and preferred alive,  timing on steaming fish is crucial; then you better be checked the doneness of the fish every minute in the last 5 minutes.  Overcooked expensive fish will ruin your day for sure.

I purchased the live Mouse grouper from Iane Fish Market that located on Jl. Kebagusan dalam I no.42, Pasar Minggu, South Jakarta. The mouse grouper in this recipe weighed about 700 grams and tagged  IDR 280.000 (40 USD/kg). Iane fish market is a trusted live seafood distributor that provide many kinds of farmed live seafood, including many kinds of groupers; including mouse grouper, coral trout, mud grouper. Beside, they provide several variant of lobster, including slipper lobster, bamboo lobster, and sand lobster. One thing for sure, they provide it with much more afforable price tag rather than fancy seafood restaurant like Bandar Djakarta Seafood Restaurant.

Iane Fish Market Proudly Showed Us a Live Mouse Grouper (and Tintin Syamsyudin as candidly background)

I was acccompanied by Tintin Syamsyudin, author of  Tinsyam.Wordpres.Com who happen as Jakartans food anthusiast who guide me when i was “foraging”  to get the live mouse. Well, actually i was hunting the fish market  throughout the Jakarta’s steel forest, damned traffic and crowded populated area of Jakarta, not to mention a big rainy storms that hits us right after  we packed the live fish, lobster and prawn and try to get home. Despite the hillarious journey we had that night, it’s a worthed and pretty great deal though;  it’s  all cost  half of the fancy seafood restaurant price.

Live Mouse Grouper in a Plastic Bag with Bubbling Aerator to Kept It Alive Pprior to Steaming It In The Next Day

Thanks God for having  Tintin Syamsyudin as a guide, i guess i won’t get there her. We were get to Iane Fish Market by afternoon at 6.P.M. I bring the live mouse grouper to my sister house with two layer of platic bag and i put some air pump aerator to kept the mouse grouper, the lobster and the prawn alive before i cooked it in the next day. I’ve posted the Live Lobster Ceviche Recipe before and i hope i can post the live prawn sashimi recipe later on.

Mouse grouper is pricey not only for the taste and texture but also as a symbol of status among chinese descent people. Serving live fish especially the rare ones like mouse grouper in a festive occations like wedding, birthday or simply entertaining relatives is a statement as a wealthy family. Some of the fishes is tagged even more expensive when it’s labelled as a wild catch, luckily my live grouper in this recipe is a farm raised from southern Lampung; clearly this made me feeling less guilty. I heard the farm involved in enviromental “green policy” that require reintroduced 1 baby mouse grouper to the the natural habitat for every five 10 they raised.

Since 2007, Mouse Grouper is listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List of  Threatened Species, because the species is naturally rare, so is sensitive to overharvesting due to its high value in the live food fish trade and to habitat degradation. Commercialy hatchery production is not intended for reintroduction, but instead for the aquarium trade, so does not result in an increase in the natural population or a decrease in demand as food. So, we should be responsible to not let our future generation only know mouse grouper from picture unless we stop eating mouse grouper; unless for one try shoots only.

Recipe Chinese Style Steamed Mouse Grouper (Hongkong Style Steamed Fish with Soy Sauce, Ginger, Scallion and Cilantro)

Ingredients

• 1 medium size live mouse grouper fish weighed about 700 gr, cleaned, gutted and scalled (you can replace with any white fleshes fish, live ones would be preferred)
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 cup thinly slice button mushrooms
• 10 lokio or bawang batak (chives)
• 1 tbs of rock sugar
• 2 tbs of premium light soy sauce
• 1 tsp premium mushroom sauce
• 1/2 tsp of sesame oil
• 2 tbsp  of  angciu /chinese cooking wine
• 1 tbsp oyster sauce
• 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 3 cm knob of ginger, finely chopped

Note: Mix all liquid ingredients and dissolved the rock sugar on it prior to steaming the fish

Garnish: Chopped cilantro

Dipping *optional : Chinese Black Vinegar, Soy Sauce, Jullienned Ginger, Chopped Bird Eye Chillies

How to Make Hongkong Style Steamed Mouse Grouper Fish:

• Rub the fish lighly with salt and lemon juice, set aside
• Put the sliced ginger, garlic and chives inside the fish belly
• Put the fish in heatproof steaming pyrex bowl
• Steam the fish about 2 minutes until half done
• Discard the dripping liquid
• Put the rest of the ingredients (except the garnish)
• Steam the bowl in your highest fire for about 10-15 minutes
• Put the fish in a serving plate, garnish with chopped cilantro

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