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Hey guys! It's Thanh, better known as "The Fruit Nerd".
And today I'm gonna cook a dish for you
which is so simple and so easy:
Basa fillet with sesame dressing.
Now, basa fillet is a fish
that is endemic to Vietnam
in the Mekong Delta, where my parents are from.
It's boneless, it's skinless,
it's really easy to cook and we are going to steam it today.
OK, so let's get cooking.
We're gonna start with a fish.
Now, I've got some old ginger here.
So old ginger is much more spicy
and it's a bit different from young ginger.
So we're just gonna cut a handful of slices.
Now you don't have to cut the skin off.
I think it's fine as long as there's not too much dirt involved.
I have here a steamable bowl.
Make sure it's steamable, you don't want it to crack in the steamer.
I'm just gonna place a few at the base like that.
Now, if your fish is a little bit too big for the bowl
you can just slice it in half.
So, like that.
Then I'm gonna place it in the steamer bowl.
And then we've got some extra pieces of ginger.
And we're just gonna put it on top.
Now the ginger is meant to
make sure that there's no fishy aromas
after you steam it
because it will leach some of the juice out
and we want it to taste fresh.
So when you're looking for basa fillet here in Australia
look for responsibly sourced or farmed
because most basa fillet is farmed in South-East Asia.
And if you’re concerned about how it's grown and how it's farmed
on the label where you purchase it at your supermarket
or at your fishmonger, it will say, responsibly sourced.
Now we're gonna put this in the steamer for 10 minutes.
So we're just gonna place it in.
Now let's get onto the sesame dressing.
So whilst the fish is steaming
we're just gonna grab three tablespoons of sesame seeds.
And then we're just gonna put it on a low-to-medium heat,
make sure it's evenly dispersed
and we're gonna wait till they start to pop.
You don't wanna step away from the pan
because you'll notice as you toss it a little bit
you can see the base gets quite brown.
So you want it evenly toast the sesame seeds.
Right, you can see it just started to pop.
We're gonna take it off straight away because that
is just going to keep on browning.
So let's take it off the flame.
So now we're gonna put this in the grinder and grind it.
Oh! If you could smell that, it's like
popcorn times peanuts, so delicious!
So let's just pour it into the grinder.
So I've just got a small coffee grinder here
and let's just blitz it.
So, I'll just put that all into a bowl and we're good to go.
All right, so it's really simple to do the sauce.
We're gonna put all of this crushed toasted sesame into a jar.
And the reason is, I'm gonna put all the sauces
and then shake it, it's just much easier.
And also you've already got your storage vessel
for the sauce in case you want to store it.
Keep it in the fridge,
it'll last a couple of days.
So, we've got the three tablespoons of toasted sesame seeds.
Now it's really simple.
One tablespoon of soy sauce.
One tablespoon of rice vinegar.
A teaspoon of mirin,
which you can replace with sugar.
And a teaspoon of sesame oil.
So what we've actually done is,
we've got the saltiness of the soy sauce.
We've got the sourness of the vinegar.
The sweetness of the mirin
and the earthiness of the sesame oil.
Combined with the nuttiness of the sesame seeds.
You've just got to give it a shake and you're done!
And this will keep for a couple of days, three or four days.
Now my favourite thing with sesame sauce
is that it's great on other dishes.
It's really versatile.
If you don't finish it, you can leave it in the fridge.
You can pour it over boiled eggs, fried chicken
and really good over tofu.
So really versatile, not just for this dish.
Let's get onto the salad.
Now I've got a red capsicum here.
I love red capsicums.
Now you can use green, yellow, whatever you like
but we're just gonna cut really thin strips
and we're just gonna place everything into the bowl.
We've got 200 grams of rocket or premixed salad.
You can also have baby spinach, whatever you like.
Really simple.
Now I've actually got some sunflower seeds
that have already been peeled.
They're absolutely delicious.
Up to your liking.
I'm gonna put a good healthy,
two or three tablespoons of these sunflower seeds in.
And now let's move on to the fruit.
Now, I've got two pears here.
I've got a Corella pear and a William pear.
So let's just cut them into really thin slices.
Now, a fruit nerd tip for you
is that with this Corella pear or any pears
the way that you can tell that it's been freshly picked
is actually by the stem.
So you can see here, this stem's really green
and this one is a little bit more whittled
and you can see here, this is getting really mature and ripe.
So, you know, if you want a freshly picked younger pear
more crispy, look at the stems
'cause that's gonna tell the picture.
Now cut the pears however you like.
I like thin strands because they've got some texture
and they will grab a bit of that flavour as well.
All right, so we're just gonna cut this into thin stripes and
Shepard avocados are the perfect salad avocado,
because it holds all of its texture.
It doesn't actually break down like the Hass.
OK, so we're about to dress the salad.
Now, with the sauce, it is quite flavourful,
salty, sour, and sweet.
So I'd actually add half first, toss it
and then if you want more put some more in later.
So dress it everywhere.
We're just gonna toss all those pears, nuts,
rocket and capsicums together.
So the fish is now ready.
That was a quick 10 minutes.
So, we're gonna just move this across
and then there's a bit of water here,
we're just gonna throw that water out.
We don't want some of those juices.
We've got the dressing to dress it up.
We're ready to plate!
Everything's done! It's only been about 10 minutes!
So we've got the salad
which we're just gonna plate up.
It's got that lovely sesame dressing on it.
All right, now we're just gonna put the fish simply —
which has being cooked perfectly as we can see here,
it's almost breaking off,
just be careful it will break off.
And it's cooked all the way through as you can tell.
Look at that! Beautiful.
We don't want the ginger,
it's done its job.
So we're gonna finish it off with just some salt and pepper.
There you have it, guys! My basa fillet sesame salad.
It's fun, fresh and fruity.