One thing that I’ve always wanted to try to prepare is Steamed Cream Dory. The fish is something that I find a lot of in the supermarket and we always use it for fish fillet but we haven’t tried it any other way. I’ve been thinking about looking for another recipe, preferably an easy dinner recipe, and I chanced upon a recipe for it on Ang Sarap.
It’s an Asian-style dish and it reminds me of something that I have tried in a Chinese restaurant. When I was preparing it, I was hoping that I could make it presentable enough to at least look like it was just as good.
The recipe on Ang Sarap serves three. My family is more than double that so I decided to change the recipe a bit to fit my family. Plus, Cream Dory is not sold per fillet, but in a pack. Anyway, here is my “revised” recipe.
Ingredients
2 packs of Cream Dory fillets
1-inch ginger, sliced into strips
salt and pepper
½ cup light soy sauce
5 cups of water
½ cup brown sugar
2 tbsp oyster sauce
2 tsp grated ginger (or more, depending on your taste)
For the Sauce:
Sesame oil
Fried garlic
Spring Onions, chopped
Instructions
Rub fish fillets with salt and pepper [Note: I used pepper that was already powdered instead of the recommended freshly ground pepper because it was the only variant available at the time. I think I was pretty generous with the pepper more than the salt for this part. The original recipe also calls for the fish to be sliced, but I opted to keep it as is with large fillets for presentation.]
Place the fish on the steamer, topped with ginger slices, and steam until it is cooked. Set aside. [Note: I didn’t use wax or baking paper as recommended. It’s supposed to prevent the fish from sticking, but that hasn’t been an issue for me even if I didn’t use it. I also went to town on the ginger and added more than what the recipe requires, because I love that flavor.]
Combine light soy sauce, sugar, water, oyster sauce, and grated ginger in a saucepan and bring to a boil. [Note: I was again going crazy with the ginger. However, I kept tasting the sauce as I added ginger so that it wouldn’t end up being overpowering.]
Place fish in a deep dish and pour the sauce, drizzling with sesame oil and garnished with fried garlic and spring onions. [Note: I was very generous with the sesame oil but not with the garlic. I decided to just give people the option to add garlic when they get their servings since not everyone likes garlic.]
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| Finished Product! |
One thing that I have to note is that I had way too much sauce by the end of it all. I think that if you make too much you can just keep it if you plan on cooking the same dish again sometime soon. You have to remember to refrigerate it though since ants are going to be attracted to the sugar if you leave it outside. You also have to be careful with the steaming of the fish and make sure that it is not over or undercooked. Once you get the steam on the cream dory tends to look like it’s cooked right away and that made me a little paranoid about when to take it out of the steamer. My sister used her toothpick-baking trick for baking to help me to decide if it was ready to be taken out (if the fish didn’t stick onto the toothpick, it was done).
This was the first main dish that I opted to prepare when I went on my cooking trip over the holidays. I wanted to do an easy recipe so that I wouldn’t get overwhelmed and so that I could do it right – I mean if it’s simple and easy, how much could I make a fool out of myself with right?
Luckily for me, my family loved the dish. When I did it again for my cousins when we all got together, they were also surprised that I made the dish and my cousin’s wife even paid me a compliment because she thought it was good. The positive comments have been encouraging and I am seriously considering doing more cooking in the future. Hopefully, I can have more time soon. The holidays have been the only time that I had time to shop and cook in a while, I hope I don’t have to wait that long to give all this a shot again.
More recipes to come soon. Hopefully!
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