Oriental Bream with Szechuan Rice

Admittedly I normally do this dish with mackerel, but I've decided to try this out with bream tonight. It's a bit more of a 'meatier' fish and it isn't as salty, so I've got use a little more soy sauce than I'm used to. It's still pretty much guaranteed to be gorgeous. This isn't a very saucy dish, despite how much actually goes into this, we use it more as a marinade and it mostly caramelises. Absolutely beautiful with very little difficulty as far as cooking goes, this is more preparation time.

Cooking Time 15 Minutes
Prep Time 4 Hours (Left to marinate)
Serves 2
Ingredients:
Two bream fillets (500g)
1 cup of rice (300g)
150ml Soy Sauce
150ml Vegetable Oil
A splash of Toasted Sesame Seed Oil
A clove of garlic
A red chilli
A knob of ginger
A bunch of coriander
Szechuan seasoning powder

It's easier to either prepare this first thing in the morning or around lunchtime, ideally the longer the fish has to soak and absorb the juices the better!

Pour your oil and soy sauce into a large dish that's big enough for the fillets to be laid out. Once these are in the juice, get your ginger and chop the furry edge from it, leaving only the yellow part. Ideally, before cutting, your piece of ginger should be as shown. Once you're left with the yellow part, thinly slice this and leave aside. Now finely chop your chilli and garlic. As mentioned in last night's blog for Steak Tacos a great tip for garlic is to chop this in half first and allow this to breathe, then to dice. Once you've got all of your chopped garlic, chilli and ginger, mix this together with half of your bunch of coriander and pour all over the bream. Tip the dish a little and baste the fish in the soy. Now cover this in tin foil and leave for as long as possible!

When you get home, or about 15 minutes before dinner time, pop your kettle on, get a frying pan on the hottest setting you can (with a little oil) and get a sauce pan on a medium high heat. Once your kettle's boiled get your one cup of rice and two cups of rice in the saucepan. REMEMBER, never stir your rice, only your fork your rice otherwise it'll stick to the pan and you'll only end up with about half of it! Once this has started blipping away pour in a little Szechuan seasoning (around a tablespoon). I managed to pick up a 200g bag of this for £1.25! Fork this through, now with a spatula, pick up your bream fillet and lay in the pan. Always lay meat AWAY from you, if your pan spits (which it may well do here) it won't spit AT you. Once both fillets are in, pour the remaining sauce over the top. Give each sides five minutes, then serve hot with the rice, remaining coriander as garnish. Throw in a few prawn crackers too!

I hope you've all really enjoyed this one guys, this recipe is really close to my heart and was the first meal I cooked for my Mum at my new house and it's something I take real pride in.

Any suggestions or things you think I should try ar truly welcome! Is there any food you don't like that you'd like me and try work with? Or anything you're always stuck with and don't know what to do with?

Thanks, and enjoy!

Dan
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