Steamed Ocean Perch with Leek Miso Sauce

Steamed Ocean Perch with Leek Miso Sauce

I’ve been cooking with fish a lot since I moved close to the fish market. It’s so much fun to try all different type of fish and experiment matching them with different methods.

This time I took a big step by buying one of the most ugly looking fish. I don’t judge people by their appearance, but some fishes have a really unusual shape that puts you off straight away, like Ocean perch with a big bumpy head.

It also had some black lining inside the guts that I had to take off.

I’m getting to like the steaming method because it leaves no mess unlike frying. The head of this fish was so big it would fit in the steamer I had, so I put it in a baking tin and placed the tin in a pan filled with water. This way turned out to have some benefit, which I got to reserve all the juice from the fish, and, believing that good fish oil is in that juice that would get thrown out otherwise, I added it to the garlic leek miso sauce.

It is very simple sauce that goes well with any thick white fish.

I had this dish with sautéed silver beet with garlic, soy and white wine.

It’s again a ‘The East meets the West’ type of dish, and the fish juice mixed with the soy miso sauce tasted so good that there was a mental fight between ‘K’ and me to eat more of the liquid.

Such a tastebud stimulator… so healthy… eating nice dinner is the biggest pleasure in my life. What’s yours?

To make the sauce

3 garlic cloves

half stalk of leek

1 miso soup sachet – I like using this in my cooking because it has extra tastes like bonito and mirin.

2 Tbs soy sauce

1 Tbs rice wine

1 Tbs rice vinegar

1 tsp wasabi powder

2 tsp grain mustard

2 chillies, seeded and cut to strips to garnish

Sauté the leek and garlic in vegetable oil until soft

Add rice wine, rice vinegar, soy sauce and miso, and simmer for 1 minute before adding wasabi and mustard

Pour this sauce over the cooked fish, then it will blend into the fish juice.

Garnish with chillies, shallot and red capsicum for colour if necessary.