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Braised Trout in Chilli Bean Sauce (Dou Ban Yu)

4.4

(8)

Image may contain Bowl Plant Food Produce Dish Meal and Vegetable
Photo by Chris Terry

The first Chinese recipe I ever cooked was a version of this dish from Yan-Kit So's Classic Chinese Cookbook. Years later—and having eaten it countless times in the Sichuanese capital Chengdu—it remains one of my favorite fish dishes, and everyone else seems to love it too. The fish lies in a spectacular sauce, a deep rusty red in color, sumptuously spicy and aromatic with ginger and garlic. In Sichuan, they tend to make it with carp. Back home in London, I've made it with sea bass, whole trout and fillets and, more recently, with organic mirror carp. They all taste delicious. (As with many Sichuanese dishes, the soul of the recipe lies in the combination of flavors and you can be flexible about the main ingredient, which is one reason why Sichuanese cuisine travels so well.) I'm particularly happy that the recipe works so well with mirror carp, one of the most sustainable fish and ripe for revival in places such as Britain, where it has long fallen out of favor.

You will probably find that the fish disintegrates slightly during cooking. Don't worry: you can arrange it neatly on the serving plate and pour the sauce over it. And when your guests taste it, if my experiences are anything to go by, they'll be so overcome with rapture that they won't care what it looks like.

Variation

Mirror carp in chilli bean sauce
For a 1 1/2–13/4 lb (700–800g) carp, follow the recipe above, but increase the quantities to 2 tbsp Shaoxing wine, 3 1/2 tbsp chilli bean paste, 1 tbsp garlic, 1 tbsp ginger, 1 cup (250ml) stock and 4 tbsp spring onion greens. Cover the wok while simmering so the thicker parts of the fish cook through, raising the lid from time to time to baste with the sauce.

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