All posts tagged: flounder

Oven baked flounder with tomatoes

If you don’t like eyes looking at you from your plate, then flounder are the worst. I grew up eating yellowbelly flounder. My parents steamed whole fish with fresh ginger and a touch of hot oil and soy, served with rice and a side of greens. Fish doesn’t need much messing around with. While I’m sure not everyone feels the same way, there’s something I find super appealing about fish served whole. Fun fish fact: Flounder are born with an eye on each side but as they develop, one eye grows over to the other side to join the other. Yellowbelly flounder are available year round and I’ve paired them here with tomatoes which also available year round as they are grown in glasshouses. When buying whole fish, Look for bright clear eyes, shiny tight scales and a moist flat tail. A fish with a dry tail is a sad sight. Your flounder will probably be gutted and most places may have scaled your fish, if not ask, for them to be scaled or do …

Buttery Golden Pan-Fried Flounder

When I was a little girl, a single steamed flounder, a plate of vegetables and plenty of rice would feed our family. My parents would allocate me and my sister a flounder roe each. Since flounder come with two roes by default, it was lucky they stopped at two kids. The roe was a treat!  The roe itself isn’t a thing of beauty, but I loved biting into it and imagining I was eating thousands of tiny fish at once. If you’re wondering what flounder roe tastes like, I find it mild and slightly creamy with a only hint of fishiness. The fish eggs are tiny – much smaller than other fish roe. Salmon is my number one fish, but if I must pick a white fish, it’s got to be flounder. I adore flounder but I usually steam or baked it. Flounder has a sweet flavour and a delicate texture. When cooked, it flakes with a little pressure and the large bones make it easy to eat whole. As a kid, my parents never shied away …

Snapper are my first world problem

Someone wise once told me, if everyone in the world put their problems into a hat, you would be glad to pull out your own. It’s true. I was pining for flounder, but at the Chinese market, flounder are held in high regard and the price reflects this. Snapper is cheap at the Chinese supermarket. At the regular supermarket, the pricing is the other way around. Snapper is expensive whereas flounder is cheap. Isn’t it funny? I had to settle for snapper. A little bit of coconut cream, chopped garlic, spring onion, green curry paste and plenty of salt and pepper. Wrapped these fish in paper and baked for 30 minutes. It wasn’t so bad. Tip: Buy flounder at the regular supermarket and snapper at the Chinese supermarket.

On the bandwagon at Depot

This week, I convinced Miss A to try out Al Brown’s new restaurant at Sky City: Depot with me. It’s had great reviews and what I read about the food really appealed to me. If you haven’t read the reviews, this place is small. The are no real chairs, just stools that you perch at. This means your bags and coats may need to find a hook on the wall. It also means that you’re unlikely to get cosy enough to let your dining experience drag on. Smart. Third time’s a charm. We had failed to get a table twice the night before – at about 7pm (full) and then at about 10pm (kitchen closed). This time we were joined by Uncle and more determined to eat. It was lunch so the turnaround was faster and that means better odds for a table. They don’t take bookings here and they get busy. You have been warned. We took one end of a large table. If communal dining isn’t your thing, then you might want to say …

Baked fish and chips with coleslaw

Happy Easter everyone! Hope you all have some feasting and chocolate eating this long weekend. We have both Mondays and Friday off for Easter. Is that the same the world over? I thought it fitting to write about fish today since Good Friday is traditionally a day when you abstain from meat, but apparently, fish is fair game. Personally, I don’t morally differentiate between eating fish and meat, but hey, I didn’t make the rules. If you don’t eat meat on Good Friday, you don’t eat meat on Good Friday. We don’t eat fish and chips very often. It’s not one of our regular takeaway choices – it’s a summer treat reserved for afternoons spent at the beach. Fish and chip shops here can be a bit hit and miss. Fresh fish comes at a price. The fish and chip shops by us are either too greasy or too expensive so it’s easier just to go without. Our too greasy local was to be just around the corner from our Sandringham flat and their “number …

Flounder baked in foil

This plate of food cost about $4 in groceries. Thanks to all this talk of flounder (you know who you are) I’ve been craving flounder hard out. I’ve never cooked whole fish in my life, only fillets so I decided that flounder was a good place to start. I had to serve these in the foil because our plates were too small for the fish without the foil. What does it mean when you need bigger plates? Baked Flounder Ingredients 1 Flounder per person (gutted and scaled*) 1 clove of garlic A smear of chilli sauce or half a red chilli Splash of soy sauce 1 tablespoon of oil Salt Black Pepper 2 Kaffir lime leaves Ginger – cut into 5 matchstick size pieces A lime  Preparation Preheat oven to 200°C. Wash the flounder and slice a large X on both sides of the fish with a sharp knife. Tear off a piece of foil large enough to fit the fish on and to wrap up. Lay this on a large shallow roasting dish. Lay …