Malinda Lo

Into the Wardrobe, a blog about children’s and YA books, has a monthlong series of posts about Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, which takes place every May in the U.S. Many APA authors are interviewed, including Cindy Pon and Justina Chen Headley, whose books I have both recently read and highly recommend!

Headley’s latest, North of Beautiful, is about an American girl with a birthmark covering half her face, and her struggles to accept herself and discover true beauty. Along the way, she rediscovers her relationship with her mother, meets a really cute Asian American boy and goes to China. Pon’s book, Silver Phoenix, is a fantasy set in an ancient China-like world, in which the heroine goes on a journey to find her father, eating a lot of very tasty Chinese food along the way.

Into the Wardrobe asks these and other Asian American authors how they celebrate APA Heritage Month, and it made me realize that I have never celebrated this — it has always struck me as more of a programming holiday (e.g., forcing the media to talk about APA issues at least once during this month) than a cultural holiday celebrated by Asian Americans. But really, why should it be this way? San Francisco holds numerous cultural events during this month, and while I didn’t get a chance to go to them, seeing those posters and yes, those news articles, made me consider my own heritage.

And whenever I think about that, I always think of food. It helped that I was reading Cindy Pon’s Silver Phoenix at the time, because that book is just chock full of tasty descriptions of Chinese food. I had such an overwhelming desire to eat some Chinese food that I went to the nearest Chinese supermarket over the weekend and bought a vast amount of food to eat and cook. In addition to carting home half a dozen roast pork buns, some zongzi, and a bunch of red bean pastries, I got ingredients to make a couple of Chinese dishes.

So, in celebration of APA Heritage Month, which is now wrapping up, I’ll share one of my favorite dishes with you, which I recently made:

Steamed Trout with Black Beans and Garlic

This is a very simple dish, as long as you have the ingredients, which you will have to acquire at your local Chinese grocery store, I’m afraid. I’ve never seen fermented black beans anywhere else. This is the basic cooking technique used in steaming fish Chinese-style, period, so once you’ve got this down, you can steam any kind of fish at all.

Ingredients:

1 large trout
4 thin slices of fresh ginger root, peeled
2 T. fermented black beans
1/2 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. Shaoxing wine
4-6 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
2-3 scallions, cut into small rounds
2 T. oil (I used canola)
2 T. soy sauce (I just use Kikkoman, although the original recipe calls for thick soy sauce)

Minced scallions and garlic, and ginger slices

Other things you will need:

Aluminum or bamboo steamer
A dish with slightly raised edges that fits within the steamer

Rinse the fish off and pat it dry. Then place the fish in the dish; if it is too long to fit in the dish whole, just cut it in half. I did! Then place the ginger slices within the cavity of the fish.

Rinse the fermented black beans, and then partially mash them with the sugar and wine, making sure to leave some beans whole. Combine the beans with the garlic, and spread the mixture over the top of the fish.

The raw fish before steaming

Partially fill the bottom of the steamer with water and set it to boil. While you’re waiting for it to boil, place the dish inside one of the steamer racks. When the water is boiling, place the rack onto the boiling water, cover it with the lid, and steam for 8 minutes.

Remove the steamer rack containing the dish from heat; it will be hot, so be careful! Sprinkle the scallions over the fish. Heat the oil in a small saucepan until smoke rises, and then pour it over the scallions. The sizzling oil partially cooks them.

Remove the dish from the steamer, taking care to not burn yourself. Usually I have to awkwardly slide a towel around the edges of the dish and kind of angle it out while trying not to spill any liquid. Then pour the soy sauce over it all.

Steamed fish, ready to eat!

To serve the fish, scrape the condiments to one side, peel off the uppermost skin, and then spoon some of the condiments and sauce back over the fish. Be careful of the tiny bones!

The steamed fish close-up!