Fish, As Food

Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach him to fish and he will sit in his boat drinking beer all day.

When you do not know what else to eat and wanted a simple yet healthy meal, go for fish soup or fish porridge. There are some very popular stalls at Newton, Toa Payoh, Whampoa, Queenstreet, Amoy Street and you can even find good ones in the heartlands and the best fish to me is still the Batang fish (or Spanish Mackerel). It has no fishy smell, is sweet and juicy with a great texture but they are costly, easily fetching from $5 to $8 a bowl. Not only that. You won't get big chunky slices no matter how generous the hawkers. 

Fisherman by profession is a tough life. You may think they get lots of dough for their catch but they offload them to wholesalers for auction and then they got to the market. It's not like they can get Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods to do the adverts and pay huge amount, thankfully no. Therefore, a better way is to get your own fish and I do not mean you get a boat and go fishing.

The fish at the supermarkets can be quite fresh but if we look carefully, some wet markets do have the freshest fish like the red snappers you can see here.

One of the best and most pricey fish is the Thread fin below.

The Batang is a very good fish, fried or made in soup.

And at the price point - not cheap but as a good quality fish that is more affordable.

The Sea Bass is a good fish too if you find a choice fillet and pan fry it. A large Sea Bass can be very expensive as the meat is good and can sometimes be found served at restaurants.

Today, you can even get ultra fresh fish like Garoupa or the most expensive promfret, the Golden Promfret from a tank displayed at some supermarkets.

The Kuning or nasi lemak fish and the Selar are tasty too but cheaper.

So for my project "What The Fish" I found one at Shunfu that has really fresh looking fish. If the fish eyes look like they have been watching Euro 2012 every night they could have been dead a very long time.

Their selection is not bad too as they have the usual popular ones including cod and golden promfret.

They have good prawns too and you know that prawns are a very popular food used in many styles. The ones you see here are from the sea but from a farm and they cost $20 a kg. The "wild" prawns that took care of themselves cost more at $30 per kg. Why is that so? Harder to catch? I don't care about you anymore and you take care of yourself and your value will rise. Haha.

These are actually good enough but they are in a way like caged chickens which are not what your mums would like as they prefer the "free roaming" kampung chickens. Just like your mobile phones, which do you like? Free roaming or not? Farmed prawns like caged chickens may be tensed from stress and not taste as good?

If that were true, most of us won't taste good. Maybe even yucky! Why? Because we live in a tense environment. When you travel it still does not mean that you are free roaming for you are still required to meet all kinds of deadlines, a day, a time for meetings and work, etc. Deadlines are so called because at the end of the line you are dead. So the chickens, fish and prawns that are free-roaming which I take to be free from everything, are happy and tasty and they end up on your plates.

So I asked for two huge slices of Batang and I saw two red and one green notes went from my wallet to the fishmonger's in just a few seconds but they were huge and chunky slices.

Then I bravely asked for half a kg of the "free-roaming" wild prawns that looked a whiter shade of pale and another red and green notes parted ways with me. I began to feel a little lighter.

But what the heck, everybody needs to earn some money. By the way, when you go to a restaurant and have two or three huge prawns in a skewer or on a plate you can cost you $25-30. Grill them nicely with light salt. Use butter or add garlic if you like. Once you have eaten it you will feel free to roam. 

This was even better. Batang fish soup with meatballs. Meatballs by itself won't taste as good unless you add chopped pieces of water chestnut in it. Use a good soup stock base like the Japanese fish powder.

It will easily cost you $20 or more if you buy fish soup for four persons. Only one of the big slices I bought was used to feed four. Moreover, you can never find such fresh, thick and chunky slices of Batang fish in your soup unless we DIY. So shiok!!

At the same market we found "tik poh" which is dried sole fish. Add this to your soup for a great flavour. Some Bak Chor Mee stalls may use this but increasingly hawkers are slowly stopping the use of tik poh as they have become more expensive.

It was a successful project and well worth the trouble.