Fresh fish
(The fish we ate for dinner: Suzhou, China)
Yesterday, this was what our dinner looked like approximately one hour before we ate it. When I accompanied Ying’s mum to the supermarket, we bought a massive selection of fruit and vegetables and all kinds of other foods. There were baby bananas, white radishes, Chinese kiwis, prawns, grains, all kinds of things. She selected a large fish from the iced counter, still untouched by a knife and asked if it could be scaled, cleaned and cut. The fishmonger to replied to her request with a simple ‘no’ and handed over the fish, now packaged in a thin plastic bag. Once we reached home again with this bounty (which was surprisingly and extremely heavy) she began to consider how we might tackle the fish as it was still completely whole.
I must admit that due to some reasons outside our control, our kitchen in China is perhaps not as well equipped as we might hope. Despite efforts to ensure there is enough pans and cutlery, we missed some vital accoutrements that Ying’s mum requires for her culinary delights. I would like to pause here and mention that although what you are about to read may sound disastrous, the meals that Ying’s mum has been making have been divine. She brought some homemade carrot cake with her so of course, I am won over already for an almost alarming love of cake. The fish looks a little pitiable here because of what we did to it. Since the gentleman in the supermarket wouldn’t oblige us, we removed the scales from the fish ourselves and also removed all the organs from within. By the time we finished tearing and pulling all the different unwanted parts of the fish out, it looked very sad and battered indeed. We also looked rather pathetic as both of us had fish scales not only on our clothes, but stuck to our faces, in our hair, on our arms and well, everywhere. Ying arrived home from work and kissed me on the cheek, as we were up to our arms in scales and he found out the hard way that they were all over my face. Needless to say, we had moved the scales from the fish and flicked them on the fridge and the wall, all over the sink, on the floor. There were glistening, silvery blue sparkles all over the floor. We trailed them all over the flat and I keep finding them stuck to cups or fired across the kitchen onto a towel.
Fortunately, by the time she had finished cooking, the fish looked (and tasted) delicious. It was an amazing dinner and it was even more satisfying to know that the fish was super fresh and had been expertly mauled by the two of us before reaching the dinner table.
Rosie, her cakes are very popular among friends. Ask for a demonstration so that you can treat your folks the same in Glasgow when you return. It is easier than the other culinary skills which will require you to be with her for a longer period of time.
What does the cake look like?? I’m curious.
By the way, try to remove the scales in water next time, it helped! But I still think it’s weird that they didn’t clean the fish for you.
i didn’t take a photo of the cake. We sort of ate it all! I’d describe it as quite a western affair with real carrot, walnuts and dried fruit inside. There’s that kind of dim sum also called carrot cake but that’s really different, this was a proper cake!