Salmon à la Mama's Fish Head Soup

[ts]
You all remember Mr. Ling Cod Head from Mama's Fish Head Soup, right? Of course you do.

We had Mama make the soup, but the fish head was already all chopped up, but I wanted a picture of the whole fish head for the blog, the supermarket wouldn't allow me to take pictures, I threw a little tantrum... Here, might as well read it for yourself.

Well, the second time we made the soup (because of that extra head I purchased), we also purchased this beautiful salmon! Sadly enough, it was missing its head. The irony.



[js]
If I remember correctly, this was a wild sockeye salmon.

[ts]
Since we already had all the Fish Head Soup ingredients out, JS decided to use the flavors from Mama's Fish Head Soup to cook the salmon.



[ts]
She prepped some garlic, ginger, green onions and leeks. She also mixed together salt & pepper in a small container. Oh, and that liquid there is shao xing wine.



[ts]
JS proceeded to stuff and rub the salmon with the above. She also used some satay, preserved Szechuan vegetable (also called preserved Chinese radish) and Tianjin preserved vegetable.


Szechuan Vegetable (aka Preserved Chinese Radish)
Before using, Mama says to soak these in water for a few minutes (10 minutes, let's say) and then rinse.


Satay Sauce/Paste


Tianjin Preserved Vegetable
These are a type of preserved cabbage, I believe. It comes in a cool little container like the one above.



[ts]
There it is in its stuffed and rubbed glory!

Next step, we wrapped the whole fish -- not too prettily -- with romaine lettuce and tried our best to make a romaine package.



[ts]
It roasted in the oven for about 45 minutes or so (I can't remember anymore), or until the fish was done.

We should've wrapped the romaine package with foil, so that everything would steam inside. We didn't, so this was the result, if you can decipher it. Ack!


left: Can one even tell what this sorry mess is?
right: Peel away the layers and some sort of beauty merges.

[ts]
But, after peeling off the more "severely roasted" romaine leaves, we ended up with some nicely charred pieces. The char tasted pretty good! All the flavors worked really well, as we already know, and the salmon was very nice and moist. Just look at its juicy self.





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Other Mama Dishes
Mama's Silkie Chicken ("Dyong Kwe")
Mama's Cilantro Beef Shin
Mama's Black Peppercorn Shortribs
Mama's Fish Head Soup
Mama's Giniling
Mama's Giniling, v4 and v5
Mama's Ampalaya (Bitter Melon)
Ma-Kut (Pork Bone) Soup