Jiangnan · Main

Songshu Guiyu

Advanced
45 min
roughly 2 of 4 for cost

umami-deep · bright · nutty-toasted Leads with savory depth stacked from the pantry’s bass notes, acid holding everything up to the light, closing toasted and warm.

Ingredients

1 mandarin fish (gui yu), about 700 g, scaled and gutted
80 g potato starch
20 ml Shaoxing wine
5 g salt
1.5 L neutral oil, for frying
60 g caster sugar
60 ml Zhenjiang black vinegar
40 g tomato paste
20 ml light soy sauce
200 ml water
30 g pine nuts, toasted
40 g green peas
40 g bamboo shoot, finely diced

The skills inside

Scoring Filleting fish Deep frying The coat before the fry: dredge, crumb, batter

The words inside

Peas, Favas & the Green Spring Mandarin Pine Nut

Allergen screen

Found: gluten · nuts · fish · soy · alcohol

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

Take the head off in one cut and keep it, then run the knife along the backbone to lift two fillets, leaving them joined at the tail with the skin on.
Lay each fillet skin down and score it in 1 cm diamonds at 45 degrees, cutting through the flesh to the skin but never into it; salt, wine, and rest 10 minutes. 10 min
Blot the fillets dry and rub starch down into every cut with your fingers, then shake them hard so the squares fall open and none stay glued shut.
Hold the tail and lower a fillet into 180C (350F) oil so the squares spring open into spikes, let go and fry 4 minutes until rigid and pale gold, then lift and return it for 40 seconds at 200C (390F) until it rings when tapped. 4 min
Boil the sugar, vinegar, tomato paste, soy and water, thicken with a starch slurry until it ribbons off the ladle and coats the back of it, stir in the peas, bamboo and pine nuts and pour it over at the table for the hiss.

How to tell it is going right

This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.

Scoring 28 recipes

Lift one cut open with a fingertip: it parts through the skin and stops in the fat beneath, showing a pale wall at its base. Any cut showing red or fibrous flesh has gone too deep; any that has not reached the fat has left the skin tethered, and it will tighten under heat.
The lines run parallel at even spacing, roughly a finger's width apart, each carried the full length of the face and stopped the same margin short of the edge. Sight down them: lines that converge, wander or crowd at one end cook at different rates and read as careless on the plate.
Each line is one clean draw of the blade held at a slant, not a sawn or doubled track, and it leaves a bevelled lip standing slightly proud rather than a vertical slot. The surface should be dry and cold, near 4C (39F), when it is cut; worked warm and slack it drags, and the blade tears where it should part.
After cooking the cuts have opened and set, each a clear gap with firm browned walls. Lines closed back to faint scratches were cut too shallow or too straight down, and the surface has shrunk over them instead of through them.
The piece lies flat and true when it is set down, with no cupping through the middle and no lifted, curled edge. A bowed piece means the tightening surface was never released, so it pulled the whole thing up and left the underside pale where it stood off the heat.

Where it goes wrong The blade was pushed rather than drawn, through a surface left warm and slack, so it went past the fat and into the flesh. The cuts bleed as they cook and the juices flood the surface, so it steams instead of crisping: the lines gape into wet ragged trenches, the flesh between them dries into hard ridges, and the skin stays leathery and pale where it should have blistered and set.

The coat before the fry: dredge, crumb, batter 80 recipes

The coat is continuous before it goes anywhere near the fat: held up to the light, no bare patch of food shows through anywhere, seams and thin edges included.
It is bonded rather than resting on top: a gentle shake sheds loose dust only, and the coat does not slide off as a sheet when the piece is handled.
It bubbles hard and steadily from the moment it enters the fat, and the bubbling visibly slows as it finishes; those bubbles are the surface water leaving, and a quiet entry means the fat is too cool.
Out and drained, it is an even gold-brown all over and it is still crisp several minutes later on a rack; a coat that softens within a minute of coming out never lost its water.
Broken open, there is no paste of raw flour under the crust and no hollow gap where the coat has lifted away from the food.

Where it goes wrong The fat was below temperature or the pan was crowded, so the coat drank fat instead of sealing against it: it comes out pale and heavy, greasy to the fingers, and slumps off the food as it cools.

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.

Family notes

Saved on this device and kept across visits: export from My Menu to move them.

Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Songshu Guiyu The cuisine, deeper Technique films from the Jiangnan kitchen