Seafood Atlas · Main
Pla Neung Manao
- Intermediate
- 35 min
- roughly 1 of 4 for cost
Leads with aromatics blooming from the first bite, savory depth stacked from the pantry’s bass notes, lifted green at the very end.
Ingredients
- 1 whole sea bass or barramundi (~800g), cleaned, scored to the bone three times a side
- The dressing, made raw: 6 garlic cloves and 6–10 bird's eye chilies chopped fine, 5 tbsp lime juice, 3 tbsp fish sauce, 1 tbsp palm sugar, 3 tbsp of the fish's own steaming liquor
- Lemongrass stalks, bruised, laid under and inside the fish
- A big handful of cilantro; thin lime slices
- A steamer large enough, or a foil tent over a rack, and jasmine rice, non-negotiable
Equipment
Steamer
The skills inside
Steaming: basket, leaf and lid
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: fish
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Lay the fish on lemongrass in a deep plate that fits your steamer (the plate catches the precious liquor); steam 12–15 min until the flesh flakes at the bone. 15 min
- While it steams, stir the dressing: raw garlic, chili, lime, fish sauce, palm sugar; it should be sour FIRST, then hot, then sweet.
- Loosen the dressing with the hot steaming juices from the plate.
- Pour it all over the fish; blanket with cilantro and lime slices; serve in the steaming plate. Spoon the pooled sauce over every serving of rice like it is the point, because it is.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Steaming: basket, leaf and lid 130 recipes
- Steam was running before the food went in: the water at a rolling boil and vapour coming steadily through the basket, rather than the whole thing warming up together.
- Nothing touches the water at any point: the food sits clear of it throughout, and the level neither drops enough to boil dry nor rises enough to wet it.
- The lid stayed on. Every lift costs the chamber its heat, and the number of lifts should be as close to none as the dish allows.
- Lifted out, the surface is glossy and plump with its colour heightened rather than dulled: greens brighter than they went in, not olive.
- Cooked through with the shape intact: it yields at the centre without having slumped or split, and there is no more than a spoonful of clean condensate beneath it.
Where it goes wrong The lid was loose or dripping and the condensate fell back onto the food, so it arrives waterlogged and pale with its seasoning washed down into the bottom of the dish.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Vermentino or Sauvignon Blanc
- Also Right
- Albariño
- From the Taps
- Witbier
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with citrus
Lean fish, bright acid, done: coastal whites built beside the same boats; the fresher the fish, the leaner the pour.
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