From Eat Drink Man Woman (1994)
Steamed Whole Fish
Reconstructed
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.
In the movie
Theatrical
- 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.
Ingredients
Steps
- 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. 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.
In the movie
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.