Spicy (?) Fried Fish!

Sunday evening post climbing (tomorrow’s feature) Pete, Jesse, and I returned to the House of Rock to make some food. We opened up my new Essential Asian cookbook, flipped to “Laos and Cambodia” and found a recipe for Spicy Fried Fish. The basic premise was such. Cut up some white fish, coat with egg and a flour-cumin-coriander mix and then fry in oil. Separately make up some hot sauce and serve.

The strange thing was, the sauce wasn’t spicy. It didn’t even have any spicy ingredients in it.
Sauce Ingredients:

sesame oil
garlic
ginger
onion
spring onion (scallions)
fish sauce
soy sauce
brown sugar
water

please tell me where the ‘hot’ is suppose to come from.

Anyway, here are some photos.

No reason to be concerned, Pete is at the Helm
Pete taking control of the frying pan.

huh?
A shot with strange perspective that looks more like a mini-mike d standing on the counter next to a giant Jesse. Jesse meanwhile is contemplating the inner workings of a cheese grater.

aint no spicy here
This is the start to the spicy sauce that wasn’t very spicy.

The final delish
The final product in all its glory!

I would give this dish the following rock climber ratings:

Difficulty: 5.9
Deliciousness: 5.8-

Really, the ‘difficult’ rating might be biased. The dish wasn’t hard to prepare, it was just annoying. I really don’t enjoy putting batter on fried foods pre-frying. Maybe there’s a better way to do it, but my way always ends up with my hands covered in batter and my egg and flour mixtures running out prematurely.

It was tasty, but I don’t think I’ll try it again.

8 thoughts on “Spicy (?) Fried Fish!

  • 1/9/2007 at 5:18 am
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    Ginger can be pretty spicy if you use enough of it (especially if you bite into a big chunk). But I’m not a big fan of excessive ginger flavouring.

    Reply
  • 1/9/2007 at 8:23 am
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    You would be really good at taking those pictures displayed above the counter in chinese take out places, the dishes always look way more delicious than they actually are.

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  • 1/9/2007 at 8:26 am
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    ha ha! that statement could be interpreted two ways:

    1) mike d’s pictures are excellent
    2) mike d’s cooking looks FAR better than it tastes

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  • 1/9/2007 at 9:29 am
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    I agree on all counts there. Unfortunately, my boyfriend seems to think that ginger is the best spice ever added to the planet, and has a tendency to come by and add more ginger to any asian or pseudo-asian marinade or sauce I am currently making. I like ginger, but he loves it.

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  • 1/9/2007 at 9:32 am
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    Club hand! You should take a look at that link, which is a transcript of a Good Eats episode. Alton Brown talks about how to bread things without breading your hands. I’d reproduce the knowledge here, but it would be inferior to AB’s genius.

    Reply
  • 1/10/2007 at 5:04 am
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    Hmm, I aquired some leeks the other day and those recipes looks great.

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  • 1/10/2007 at 10:12 am
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    I have the FRYER OF GODLY PROPORTIONS!! It fries everything!

    Reply

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