It has been a while since I’ve last shared my cooking with everybody here. You see, I’ve been busy working on another project. In this post, I’m sharing my latest achievement – briasied fish.

红烧 or braising is a unique way of cooking that combines “dry” and “moist” cooking. Some people said that braising is used to soften tough food which would otherwise be unpalatable. Well, you might as well call it stewing. A distinction needs to be made here. Unlike stewing which involves only involves moist cooking, braising always involves a preliminary frying process.

Here we have three pieces of fish frying on a pan. Most chefs recommend that we deep fry this, but I don’t have that much oil.

Here are the vegetables to go along. I’ve chosen red and yellow bell pepper, green onion, ginger, chilli padi and onions.

This is what the fish looks like after frying. I pushed it aside and dumped in the vegetables on the other end. After a bit of stirring, the ginger, green onion and bell pepper should give the dish a nice aroma.

In stage 2, we add the liquid – just water, dark soy sauce and sugar. We turn up the head and reduce the liquid until the fried fish soaks up all the flavours. That is how braising works.

And this is what it looks like on my dinner table. I’ve only added a couple of chillis here. The kids loved it.

© Chan Joon Yee