New York Times
MY friend Charlie Mayer, a producer for National Public Radio who is spending a year in Mongolia, traveled to Cambodia last month and reported to me on a preparation of fried ginger and fried fish.
"What else?" I asked him in an e-mail message.
"Nothing," he replied.
I pressed him for more details. "The secret," he finally wrote, "is that the ginger is shaved in lovely little curlicues; and it's cooked both before and after the fish. It's not only tasty, but crunchy."
The recipe here is probably a tad gussied up compared with the original. But I like it this way. The key is the twice-cooked ginger, which becomes crisp but retains a fair amount of its heat. You can julienne it; slice it into disks, preferably with a mandoline; or strip off pieces with a vegetable peeler.
Try to buy young, thin-skinned (sometimes called Hawaiian) ginger. It will be less fibrous and more pleasant to eat. And get a lot: a half-pound is not too much.
Mr. Mayer said the Cambodian version featured freshwater fish, but unless you know a fisherman, every freshwater fish you can buy is farm-raised and slightly muddy-tasting. These days catfish is the best available (steer clear of tilapia; trout is too delicate for this dish), but I'd sooner use red snapper, black bass or even cod.
"What else?" I asked him in an e-mail message.
"Nothing," he replied.
I pressed him for more details. "The secret," he finally wrote, "is that the ginger is shaved in lovely little curlicues; and it's cooked both before and after the fish. It's not only tasty, but crunchy."
The recipe here is probably a tad gussied up compared with the original. But I like it this way. The key is the twice-cooked ginger, which becomes crisp but retains a fair amount of its heat. You can julienne it; slice it into disks, preferably with a mandoline; or strip off pieces with a vegetable peeler.
Try to buy young, thin-skinned (sometimes called Hawaiian) ginger. It will be less fibrous and more pleasant to eat. And get a lot: a half-pound is not too much.
Mr. Mayer said the Cambodian version featured freshwater fish, but unless you know a fisherman, every freshwater fish you can buy is farm-raised and slightly muddy-tasting. These days catfish is the best available (steer clear of tilapia; trout is too delicate for this dish), but I'd sooner use red snapper, black bass or even cod.
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