I'm the Culinary God-Chapter 808 - 353: The Stewed Catfish Head That Falls Apart at a Touch! Another Day of Being Tricked by the System!
In the store, Xie Baomin began to teach Lin Xu how to cook fish heads.
Today’s fish head is relatively large, so he specially used the largest two-handled frying pan to fill it more than halfway with water and started boiling on high heat.
But he didn’t put the fish head in immediately. Instead, he placed the huge fish head in a basket, with the fish skin facing up, then poured hot water, about seventy to eighty degrees, over the fish skin.
Lin Xu looked a bit surprised:
"Do you need to scald the skin for cooking fish, brother?"
"Direct cooking can easily break the skin. Scalding it first makes the fish skin more intact. This step is similar to making white-cut chicken, and almost all dishes that require the skin to be intact need the skin to be scalded first."
Xie Baomin explained while busying himself.
He scalded the fish head several times, then put it into the pot with the fish skin down.
After putting it in, he added slices of ginger and large pieces of scallion to the pot, then poured in a ladle of rice wine.
When dense small bubbles appeared at the edge of the pot, he turned down the heat to keep the water in the pot around seventy to eighty degrees.
This water temperature can preserve the integrity of the fish as much as possible, and the fish skin will not break.
Dai Jianli, who was frying crayfish nearby, said:
"This dish mainly uses hot water to cook the fish, just like white-cut chicken and boiled shrimp. The water can’t boil, and it shouldn’t even reach ninety degrees. Slowly soak it. That way, the fish remains intact, and the bones are easy to remove."
Huaiyang cuisine is known as the scholar’s cuisine, emphasizing elegance. The most elegant aspect of this Stewed Catfish Head dish is keeping the bones clean while maintaining the fish skin’s integrity.
In this case, soaking in hot water becomes the only choice.
Zhuang Yizhou, who is from the Yanjing Hotel, had more exposure to this dish.
He asked curiously:
"When I was an apprentice, a master said that if you don’t want to boil, you could steam it. Steaming can achieve the effect of separating the skin and flesh without breaking the fish’s bones."
As soon as he finished speaking, Dai Jianli said:
"Then you can give him a slap. That’s misleading the students! Why use the soaking method? It’s to let the hot water penetrate along the bone seams. Steaming has a high temperature; not only does it not allow hot water in, but it also causes the fish’s moisture to be lost, leaving the meat stuck to the bones. How can you debone it then? Just add a spoonful of chopped pepper and you have Chopped Pepper Fish Head."
Xie Baomin also said:
"Steaming can’t produce a complete fish head. Our team of chefs once tried with dozens of fish heads, testing steaming, boiling, frying, and deep frying, and only the soaking method worked."
The chefs at the Fishing Platform occasionally gather for more than just internal competition; they sometimes experiment with different dishes.
In this regard, Director Liao from the Dining Department was happy to see it happen, as these ingredients aren’t expensive, and after practice, they are eaten as staff meals, ensuring not a shred of waste.
Many famous dishes, which seem unattainable to ordinary people, have long been grown tired of by them.
Seeing that the two head chefs were not holding back, others crowded around.
Wei Qian asked:
"Chef Xie, what’s the maximum water temperature for the fish head?"
"Eighty-five. If it exceeds eighty-five degrees, the gelatin in the fish skin will dissolve, and the muscle fibers and texture of the fish will break, making the meat mushy and impossible to debone. If there’s time, it’s best to keep it below eighty degrees throughout, to ensure the highest integrity of the fish."
Taking advantage of the time spent soaking the fish, Xie Baomin began preparing the auxiliary ingredients, which included rehydrated shiitake mushrooms, rehydrated sea scallops, fresh winter bamboo shoots, and a piece of Jinhua ham.
The Jinhua ham was briefly boiled in water, and the shiitake mushrooms and winter bamboo shoots were sliced.
Once everything was ready, he started another pot on the nearby stove, added pork bone broth, and blanched the winter bamboo shoots and shiitake mushrooms to remove their astringency.
After boiling, the ham was sliced and also blanched to awaken as much of its umami as possible.
Zhu Yong looked at these ingredients in surprise and said:
"Shiitake mushrooms are the freshest from the grass, sea scallops are the freshest from the sea, ham is the freshest from the land, winter bamboo shoots are the freshest from underground, and the fish head is the freshest from the river... This dish is surprisingly the fusion of five fresh flavors."
Xie Baomin wiped his hands and shook his head, saying:
"No, it’s not five fresh flavors fused together; it should be six or seven."
Lin Xu was increasingly unable to understand his brother’s words.
Isn’t this dish made of five ingredients?
Could there be other ingredients?
He remembered his brother mentioning that when he brought up the fish, Chef Qiu felt bad and gave them a can of crab paste.
This statement is actually quite suspicious.
You’ve already taken advantage of him with two fish, and you say he feels bad?
Chef Qiu isn’t some masochist, so why would he feel bad? He was probably jumping up and cursing at the time, right?
Could it be that the can of crab paste his brother brought, even risking being scolded by Chef Qiu, is to be used as an ingredient for Stewed Catfish Head?
Thinking of this, Lin Xu asked:
"Is this can of crab paste also one of the ingredients?"
Dai Jianli gave Lin Xu a thumbs-up:
"That’s right, not only do you have river fresh, but you also need to add a lake fresh. The paste of male crabs can enrich the color of the soup and increase the richness of the soup base."
A delicious Stewed Catfish Head is tender, flavorful, and rich, with the fish’s gelatin perfectly blending with the soup’s umami.
To achieve this effect, just adding lard isn’t enough, because too much lard can become greasy. You need to add crab paste for that rich and thick texture that leaves people wanting more.
"So what was the seventh fresh flavor brother mentioned just now?"
"It’s crab oil, which is the oil made by boiling the crab shells left after picking out the crab meat. This oil isn’t necessary but serves as the finishing touch."
