The ikan bawal that we often come across in Indonesian makan places is usually the black pomfret and the most common way of doing it is to bakar or to grill. White pomfret is almost exclusively used for Chinese (Teochew style) steaming. It is also the most expensive of the 3 types of pomfret – white, grey and black.

For grey and black pomfret, there is another excellent way of cooking them – with asam. For this dish, I used a special fish curry mix that I bought in Malaysia. You can check it out over here but I doubt they ship to Singapore.

To turn this curry into an asam, just mix a large spoonful of asam sauce and some sugar into the mix. I’m not sure if other brands of fish curry mixes work as well.