Eating - Jason Epstein [39]
At dinner in Brooklyn, Eddie recalled these events in his cheerful, dispassionate way but concluded with a sigh: that night, he said, “we had a line out the door.” Eddie has since created several fine Chinese restaurants in New York, most recently the Chinatown Brasserie on Lafayette Street, one of the two or three top Chinese places in town at the moment. The dinner he served that night was effortless and sublime. The main dish was a simple steamed salmon fillet about a half-inch thick, served in bite-size pieces beneath a sauce that requires careful measurements until you’ve made it a few times. Once you understand how the complex flavors blend—the fermented black beans are dominant, but faintly, like an echo; the oyster sauce provides body and salty sweetness; the sherry adds a delicate nip—you will have no trouble reproducing Eddie’s dish, which, including prep, shouldn’t take more than ten minutes, assuming you have the ingredients and equipment at hand. Salmon and fermented black beans are of course a well-known combination, but this subtle treatment gives the traditional preparation a nice bounce. Serve it with mildly flavored fried rice, or precooked Hong Kong noodles, mixed with enough sesame oil and soy sauce to add a mild flavor.
SALMON WITH FERMENTED BEANS
You will need a twelve-inch bamboo steamer with a tight-fitting lid, a fourteen-inch wok, and a ten-inch heat-proof platter, lightly oiled so that the fish won’t stick. For the sauce, you will need a small bowl in which to mix a half-teaspoon each of minced garlic, minced fresh ginger, and sugar; a teaspoon each of regular (Kikkoman, e.g.) soy sauce and dark soy sauce, blended with mushrooms, which you will find in Chinese food shops;two teaspoons of oyster sauce, available in many supermarkets;a tablespoon each of finely chopped fermented black beans (sold in Chinese food stores) and dry sherry;and a dash of fresh-ground white pepper. A quarter-teaspoon of MSG is optional and unnecessary. To the mixture add a teaspoon of potato starch if you can find it in a local health-food store—or arrowroot, or as a last resort cornstarch—dissolved in two tablespoons of water. Then put three inches of water in the wok, fit the steamer to it—make sure that the bottom edge of the steamer sits in the water, or it will scorch—and bring the water to a boil. Center two half-inch fillets on the oiled plate, pour the sauce over them, and sprinkle a half-cup or so of green onions over that. Put the plate in the steamer, and cover it tightly with the bamboo top. Do not use a metal top or the condensed steam will fall back onto the fish and ruin it. After three or four minutes, the fish should be barely cooked through at its thickest part. Break the fish up with a chop-stick, mix the fish bits with the sauce, and serve at once. This is a wonderful dish for four; quick, easy, inexpensive, and delightful.
FRIED RICE
For fried rice, boil two cups of rice with two and a half cups of water: I use basmati, but any unflavored standard long-grain rice will do. Boil until the water disappears, then cover and set over a very low flame to steam for ten minutes or so, until all the water is absorbed and the rice is just beyond al dente. If you overcook it, don’t despair. Turn it into gruel by adding a little water and cooking it further, adding soy sauce, chopped meat or fish, etc., and serve it as congee. Otherwise, let the rice cool and dry for an hour or two or overnight. Then, in a wok, heat a quarter-cup of vegetable oil, and when the oil is very hot but not smoking, add the rice and shove it around with a Chinese shovel-like scoop if you have one, or whatever else serves the purpose. After a minute or two, when the rice is well coated with oil, add soy sauce sparingly to taste. Then break an egg into the rice and mix it about until