Cantonese Stuffed Chili Peppers (釀青椒)
Stuffed with fish and a classic from Shunde
Ok, so I’d like to talk about boney river fish.
It’s a pretty common situation for a visitor to China – maybe you’ve had some Shuizhu Fish at a Sichuan restaurant back in the West. Maybe you quite like it. You come to China and excitedly order the same dish, dig in, and… bones. Lots of little ones, tiny shards poking your gullet, and they seem… impossible to eat around. And while I’ll usually wax poetic about how I think more Americans should be comfortable eating around bones (e.g. Chinese poultry dishes), this one… I totally get.
Those little fish bones, literally translated, are referred to as “fish daggers” in Mandarin… and it can be a bit tough to work through. You have to eat at like a snails pace, patiently nibbling at the meat. Otherwise? It’s crazy easy to get them stuck in your throat, to which the cure is gargling vinegar. They’re often called “trash fish” in America. So then, you might ask, why even go though the trouble of eating those sorts of fish?
The answer’s pretty straightforward – they taste good. Like, the flesh itself. Certain breeds of river fish are often prized as very ‘umami’ fish, and are deemed worth the effort. Where those happen to fall on your personal taste <-> effort continuums is ultimately up to you.
Which brings me to lingyu – mud carp. Lingyu is a small, super boney river fish that’re found in the Pearl and Mekong rivers. They are an extreme case of the above dynamic – super tasty fish, super boney. In Vietnam they crack that nut by eating the fish only when they’re small (i.e. about fingerlings) so that they can be eaten whole. Smart, IIRC they make a hotpot with them. Cantonese cuisine, meanwhile… takes a different approach.
Adult Lingyu are used, but’re used in a whole host of different preparations – some of which feel like echo an almost deconstructionist view of cooking. The basic way to sort it’s to mince it up – bones and all – and pound it into a paste, stuffing it into everything from chilis (what we’ll show you today) to bitter gourd, to back into the skin the fish came in. Another awesome use of the paste is to make it a bit looser, mix it with egg white, and deep fry it – a preparation that’s so reminiscent of tofu that it’s literally called “fish tofu”. Or another way people sort it is to carefully get all of the flakes of meat off the little bones, and make it into a soup that’s a deadpan for the consistency of congee.
Now, I know you’re not going to be able to source mud carp… I mean, unless you happen to live along the Pearl or Mekong rivers. Don’t worry, I tested this with sea bass and tilapia too, it all works (with an adjustment or two).
So why am I telling you all this? Because I feel like it a speaks to a bit of the essence of Cantonese food. Ask ten Cantonese chefs what Cantonese food’s all about and at least nine will respond “preserving the original taste of the ingredient”. And I guess maybe compared to, say, Sichuan food? But how much of the original taste of pork do you get in braised pork with Chuhou paste? Or soy sauce chicken? Cantonese food, to me, is about transformation – taking ingredients that some people may discard and doing awesome things with them. And while that philosophy can certainly be found in many cuisines… it just feels especially pronounced here.
Anyway, enough rambling. Fish stuffed chilis. I’ll show you how to make it the original way using Lingyu (just in case you happen to live in China or want to get creative with your own local boney fish), and also show you how to sort it with something you could actually buy from the supermarket.
Ingredients
Flaky fish fillets, e.g. Tilapia (非洲鲫鱼) or Sea Bass (海鲈), obviously preferably Lingyu (鲮鱼) if remotely possible, 250g. Really any flaky fish should work, though I’ve only tested it with Sea Bass and Tilapia. Quick high level overview in case you’re a by-ratio sort of person like me: the paste is 10 parts fish, 2 parts water, 2 parts water chestnut, 1 part cornstarch, half part scallion.
Optional-ish: dried scallops (干贝) -or- dried shrimp (虾米), 5g reconstituted in 50mL of how, boiled water. Ok, so here’s the deal: Lingyu is this famously umami fish. Tilapia is this infamously not-that fish. How to close the gap? We found reconstituting dried scallop, including that into the mix, and then using the soaking liquid as the liquid for the paste helped enormously. If dried scallop’s not reasonable for you to source, use dried shrimp. If neither are, then I mean, whatever… charge ahead anyhow. Maybe add a sprinkle of MSG or a good fish sauce.
Salt, 1 tsp. Seasons, but also helps develop the myosin in the fish to make it sticky.
Cornstarch (生粉), 25g. To be mixed in with the soaking liquid (or just water if you’re not using the soaking liquid).
Seasoning for the paste: ½ tsp sugar, ¼ tsp white pepper powder (白胡椒粉).
Water chestnut (马蹄), 50g. Minced, for some crunch.
Scallion (葱), 15g. Thinly sliced. I like mine a bit more scallion heavy than some, 5-10g might be more authentic.
Chilis: Jalapenos, 6-8 -or- Jianjiao (尖椒), 4. Halved. So this dish uses Jianjiao, a mild sort of Chinese pepper. Not sure what I’d estimate the SVUs at, but it’s the sort of chili that’s really mild if you just eat the flesh, but then has a real obvious kick to it if you ate it with the ribs and seeds. To me, that’s feels like a lot like Jalapeno. There’s nothing all that special about that chili so feel free to be liberal with your subs – I’d probably reach for Jalapeno if I was in the States or whatever. Jalapeno has a slightly more distinctive taste but I don’t think it’d be bad (honestly, it might be even better). The issue is more size… it’s really annoying for me to get my hands on fresh Jalapenos here in Shenzhen so I haven’t tested it myself. I think that 6-8 chilis feels about right to me… but you might have excess fish paste (which you can always form into fish cakes and fry up, not a huge loss or anything).
Mijiu rice wine (米酒) -or- sake -or- water. To give the chilis a quick steam when frying. Mijiu seems to really work for this dish, so if you can’t find it I’d recommend sake (which’s a similar sort of rice wine as Mijiu). If neither are convenient, just use water.
Seasoned soy sauce to serve: 20mL hot boiled water, 1.5 tbsp light soy sauce (生抽), ½ tsp fish sauce (鱼露), ½ tsp sugar. There’s a million seasoned soy sauces in Cantonese cuisine, like almost every restaurant’ll have their own that they like. We like this one – 10 parts water, 10 parts soy sauce, 1 part fish sauce, 1 part sugar. Fish sauce isn’t really used much in Cantonese cuisine but it is around, and one usage for it is this sort of seasoning soy sauce.
Process
Reconstitute the dried scallops: 30 minute hot water soak, ~8 hour cold water soak. If a hot water soak’s a little annoying to do logistically, you could also swap for a cold water soak… do it before work or whatever.
Mince the scallop and the water chestnut, slice the scallion, mix the cornstarch in a bowl with the soaking water (if using). If you’re not using the soaking water, just use water for this slurry.
If using Lingyu: skin the fillet, slice across the fillets into thin ~1-2mm pieces to break up the bones. If you aren’t using Lingyu, skip to the next step. If you are, skin the fillets by slicing into the back of the fillet, press down with your knife, and rip the meat from the skin with your hands. Then, once you’ve got your fillets, finely slice them across the bone to break them up… you should be able to hear the bones breaking.
Quickly mince the fish, then chop/pound for 5-10 minutes until you get a good paste. Ok, so I think theoretically you should be able to do this in a food processor. Don’t own one though, so you’re on your own there. Grab a cleaver or two and just start going at it, periodically folding the meat over itself in order to get a nice mealy paste. If you’re more used to doing this with pork, note that it’ll be a bit more granular than pork… something like this is fine. For us, getting there took 5 minutes for Lingyu, 10 minutes for Sea Bass, and Tilapia was somewhere in between IIRC.
Toss in a bowl, add in the salt, stir for ~1 minute. Add in the cornstarch slurry bit by bit, stirring constantly, ~4 minutes. What you’re looking for is the fish begin to break down further into a sticky paste. This is the same idea as making an emulsified sausage like a mortadella – what you’re aiming to do is develop the myosin in the meat mixture. Lots of different things can affect myosin development – the freshness of your fish (the fresher the better), the coldness of your mixture (the colder the better, it’s a nice idea to keep you soaking liquid in the fridge until you use it), the fat content of your fish (the leaner the better), and of course the mixing time. For us, this took ~4 minutes, but depending on your situation it might take a bit more or a bit less. Look for something sort of like this in the end.
’Dat’ the mixture: grab everything and slam the mix down against your bowl ~10 times. One of my favorite techniques in Chinese cooking. Helps develop springiness in the mix.
Mix in the sugar and the white pepper, then mix in the scallop, the scallion, and the water chestnut. Really go at it to mix them all evenly in, then toss in the fridge until you’re ready to stuff.
Slice the chilis in half lengthwise, de-seed. If you’re happening to use Chinese jianjiao, I like to chop off the very end as they seem to love to scorch. If you washed your chilis recently, make sure their dry for the next step.*
Coat the inside of the chili with cornstarch, and stuff with your fish mixture. The cornstarch coating’ll help the filling stick to the inside of the chili. We like to stuff the chili with chopsticks because we find we can get more in, but feel free to use a rubber spatula.
Make the seasoned soy sauce. Dissolve the sugar into the hot boiled water, then add the rest of the ingredients and set aside.
Pan-fry/steam the chilis. As always, first longyau: get your wok piping hot, shut off the heat, add in the oil – here about a half a cup, we are pan-frying after all – and give it a swirl to get a nice non-stick surface. Alternatively, if working with something flat-bottomed get the oil up ½ inch from the bottom of the pan. Heat the oil up (over whatever flame you want) until bubbles start to form around a pair of chopsticks, ~175 centigrade. Then, shut off the heat, and:
Place the chilis filling side down into the wok and press it slightly as you do so. We like doing this step with the heat off as sometimes the first ones might end up overcooking.
Swap the flame to medium-high. If working with a round-bottomed wok, start tilting the wok in each direction – to the left, to the right, away from you, towards you, center… the idea should be that at some times the chilis should be completely submerged in oil, sometimes just frying on a thin smear. Flat bottomed, just let em fry.
After three minutes or so, the bottom should be golden brown. At that point, swirl in the wine (or water) and immediately cover. Steam for ~15 seconds.
Uncover, flip the chilis with a spatula, stir things around for ~15 seconds. Out.
Let any excess oil drain out, then plate. Pour the seasoned soy sauce all over everything.
If you have extra paste:
Don’t fret. Just grab ~2 tbsp of filling and shape it into a cake. Then pan-fry over medium heat for about ~ minutes each side, or until it’s golden brown. Dip in soy sauce.