From Eat Drink Man Woman · 1994 · Reconstructed
Steamed Whole Fish
Serve when
Serve it as the centerpiece of the Sunday feast — the moment Chef Chu rings the family to the table for the weekly banquet where everyone eats well and says nothing that matters.
Before you start
Steaming and the hot-oil finish only take minutes, but this dish lands in the film's first two minutes — have it ready to plate before you press play.
Cook-along start: before the movie
In the movie
Theatrical
- ~00:02:00 The film's virtuoso opening: master chef Chu prepares an elaborate Sunday dinner for his three daughters, netting a live fish and steaming it whole — the weekly ritual that holds the fracturing family together in food if not in words.
The opening banquet is one of the great cooking sequences in film — Chu's hands moving faster than his family ever will toward each other. The Sunday dinner is where the whole story lives: a widowed master chef who has lost his sense of taste still expressing all his love the only way he knows how, one impeccable dish at a time, to daughters drifting away from him.
Ingredients
Method
- Score the fish twice on each side. Lay ginger slices and a few scallion whites on a heatproof plate and set the fish on top; tuck more ginger into the cavity.
- Steam over vigorous heat for 8–10 minutes, until the flesh at the bone is just opaque and flakes when nudged with a chopstick (145°F at the thickest point). Pour off the watery liquid that collects.
- Warm the soy sauce, sugar, and water together until the sugar dissolves; pour around (not over) the fish.
- Pile the shredded ginger and scallion over the fish.
- Heat the oil until just smoking and pour it over the aromatics — it should sizzle and bloom. Finish with cilantro and serve whole, at the center of the table.
Beyond the recipe
Watch & shop
As an affiliate, FlixNFood may earn from qualifying purchases.