Thai Style Steamed Fish Recipe (Mouse Grouper Fish with Chilli, Torch Ginger, Tamarind & Mushrooms)

Thai Style Steamed Mouse Grouper Fish

Thai style steamed fish with chillies and tamarind is a break from a serial of  luscious and meaty fest lately. I guess i’ve got to many pork intake from Balinese Style Grilled Baby Back Ribs Recipe, Schweinshaxe Recipe (Bavarian Crispy Roasted Pork Hock) and also Coffee Glazed Barbequed Pork Belly Recipe. I need some spicy, hot and sourish less calories dish for my lunch, and there you go for steaming fish in Thai style. Steamed fish a very easy and quick to prepare, whole mouse grouper fish that butterflied and then steamed with incredible thai style seasoning with a tangy, spicy hot and also burst with aromatic ingredients. The hotness derived from chillies, lots of them, chopped into fine to make sure all the spicy goodness released. I’m not using any salt for my steamed fish, the savoury and salty comes from the using of fish sauce and a little bit of tausi or salted black bean.Topped with frangrance chopped cilantro and also jullienned pink torch ginger or bunga kecombrang made the dish smells complex even more.

Steamed Mouse Grouper Fish with Chilli, Garlic, Tamarind, Torch Ginger and Cilantro

This Thai style steamed mouse grouper fish seasoning inspired by a spicy sour tom khlong soup, a cousin of famous Thai tom yum goong soup. Instead using lime juice for the sourness as tom yum goong,  tom khlong using tamarind paste. My version of Thai style steamed fish using both tamarind and lime actually, i using kaffir lime juice to marinade the whole grouper fish to remove the fishy and slighly muddy odor before steaming and then using the tamarind paste for seasoning the fish while being steamed. Different from my other sour and spicy Steamed Live Seven Star Grouper in Teochew Style that using raw thinly sliced spices, the ingredients of this Thai style steamed fish is chopped and sauteed first. The spices sauteed in a little ammount of oil made some sort of caramelization process and remove the aroma langu or the strong odor of raw garlic, chillies and ginger into a pleasant flavour.

Thai Style Steamed Whole Humpback Grouper Fish

 Humpback grouper for this Thai style steamed fish recipe it’s famous high end expensive food for steaming fish in Hongkong, Malaysia, Indonesia and also Singapore. Humpback grouper or mouse grouper is usually steamed in Cantonese Style Steamed Live Humpback Grouper Recipe with a minimum additional flavour of light soy sauce to enlighted the natural taste of the fish itself.  Eventhough the  flesh texture of the mouse grouper is not as firm and succulent as chinese silver pomfret which is commonly used in Steamed Fish with Fermented Black Bean Sauce or Tausi, 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, cooking 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 like humpback grouper will ruin your day for sure.

Steamed Mouse Grouper Fish Cheeck, The Best Part!!!

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. Steamed humpbak grouper is a real threat in a festive occations like wedding, birthday or hosting a relatives dinner is a statement as a wealthy family. Luckily, i found this very-very fresh humpback grouper in Muara Angke fish market Jakarta with only cost me about IDR 40.000 (4 USD) for about 600 grams of it. The fish monger told me that this humpback grouper is really rare, he even only sold this fish about ten times eversince he started selling fish for almost 30 years ago. His info drives me into a dillemas, either i’m a very lucky bastard but i’m also the ignorant person who kept purchasing high risk endagered wild species, well, i guess my culinary instinct beat the heck of my inner voices then.lol

Humpback Grouper, Mouse Graoupe, Dotted Barramundi Cod, Kerapu Tikus, Kerapu Bebek

Bonus Fish Eggs for Spicy Thai Style Steamed Fish

Spicy, Hot and Sour Steamed Fish in Thai Style with Chilles, Tamarind and Torch Ginger Flower

Since 2007, Humpback or Mouse Grouper is listed as vulnerable or high risk of endangerment in the wild 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. But forgive me, my taste buds really love mouse grouper for it’s natural sweetness.

Thai Style Steamed Fish Recipe with Chili, Tamarind, and Torch Ginger Flower

Thai Style Steamed  Fish Recipe (Humpback/Mouse Grouper)

Ingredients:

• 1 medium-sized very fresh or live humpback grouper (600-700 gr), you can substitute it with other white flesh fish that suitable for steaming
• 1 pack button mushrooms (about 125 gr), thinly slice
  
• 1 bunga kecombrang/honje or torch ginger flower, jullienned
• abunch of chopped cilantro
• Garnish: Julienned Torch Ginger
• 1 small kaffir lime, juiced

Hot and Spicy Thai Style Seasoning Paste fir Steaming Fish Recipe:

• 6 red chilli pepper ( or more for kicking hot), finely chopped
• 6 bird eye chilli pepper, finely chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1 thump size ginger, finely chopped
  
• 1 red shallots, finely chopped
• 1 tbsp light fish sauce
• 1 tbsp salted black bean sauce
  
• 1 tsp Chinese rice wine
• 2 stalks scallions (white part ony) thinly slices
• 2 cayenne chilli pepper, deseeded, jullienned
• 2 bird’s eye chilli peppers, chopped
• 2 tbsp tamarind paste
  
• 1tbsp palm sugar
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil for sauteeing

How to Make Thai Style Steamed  Fish Recipe :

• Remove the scales from the mouse grouper fish
• Gutted and remove the fish gills, rub and discard the blackish dark red part in the fish upper ribs area (below the back bone)
• Wash and clean the fish under running water
• Pat dry the excess moisture using kitchen paper, set aside
• Butterfly the fish from the belly and remove the pin bones with clean tweezer or pliers, you can see the instruction how to butterfly fish from the belly side
• Season the fish with salt, pepper and kaffir lime juice, set aside
• In a wok pan, heat the oil and saute garlic, shallots, chillies, scallions and ginger for a couple of minute until the spices changing color into slightly browned and got a really nice fragrance
• Add the rice wine, fish sauce, tamarind, palm sugar, salted black bean and water, bring to boil and remove from the heat, set aside
• Place the fish bottom of the heat proof bowl, put the butterflied fish on top of it
• Put the sauteed thai style spice over the fish and then put some julienned torch ginger flower

My steamer is too small for whole fish, so i made this reversed double boiler or steaming fish using my wok pan

• Steam the Thai style mouse grouper fish for about 10-12 minutes, according to the size of your fish
• Served it with steaming hot rice

FUN DENTISTRY FACTS:

Your first permanent molar erupt when you 0nly 6-7 YEARS OLD, kids this age usually pretty much didn’t concern about oral hygene, so you as parents is the one who responsible to watch and manage your childrens oral gygene and supervise how they brushed their teeth, don’t forget to visit your dentist at least twice a year even without any oral symptoms !

You May Also Like (Click!)