Taiwanese capers, for real

The first time I visited the village of Wulai in the mountains outside of Taipei, I had only been in Taiwan for a couple of months. This was a local tourist destination famous for its hot springs, and it also offered lots of shows by the native Atayal people. My favorite was The King impersonator who did a great job transporting Vegas Elvis across the ocean into a sequined white suit with lots of fringes. He sang pretty well, too. But that was my sum impression of Wulai until a friend took me there for lunch. And then I had some fish.

The day didn’t start out as anything special: we took a bus up the winding road into town, roamed around the few streets, admired the enormous piles of fruit the area produced, and studied countless red plastic trays piled with the produce and proteins that each little restaurant displayed outside the front door.

My friend settled on one place overlooking a meandering creek, and I was delighted when I spied some very tender bird’s nest fern fronds (shānsū 山酥) that a proprietress assured me would be great in a stir-fry, and they did actually turn out to be just as soft and slippery as I’d hoped against some chewy pork shreds decorated with fermented black beans.

Then came a steamed freshwater fish adorned with ochre beads that I could not identify. My friend called them pòbùzi 破布子, which must be a transliteration of some local name, since i just means “broken cloth seed.” Their flavor really made my taste buds stand up, because they were like capers crossed with soy sauce, and they formed the perfect complement to the tender fish. I have come to call them “Taiwanese capers.” They have hard pits inside, just like olives, so be sure not to feed them to children and others who might crack a tooth if they’re not careful.

These capers are sold in jars in the pickle section of many Chinese groceries under a variety of names, like shùzǐ 樹子 or yīnshùzǐ 蔭樹子, so the main thing to look out for are the little fleshy seeds floating in a clear brine.

Steamed fish with Taiwanese capers

Pòbùzǐ zhēngyú 破布子蒸魚

Taiwan

Serves 2

8 ounces fish filets (flatfish works beautifully), or a small whole fish

¼ teaspoon sea salt

1½ tablespoons mild rice wine

1 tablespoon finely shredded fresh ginger

1 clove garlic, finely chopped

1 red jalapeño pepper, seeded and julienned

1 green onion, the whites and greens kept separate, trimmed and julienned

¼ cup Taiwanese capers, plus a bit of the brine

1 teaspoon regular soy sauce

2 tablespoons fresh peanut or vegetable oil

1. Pat the fish dry and lay it on a rimmed plate that will fit easily into your steamer.  Sprinkle the salt and rice wine over it and let it marinate for about 15 minutes. Pour off any liquid that accumulates on the plate.

2. Sprinkle the top of the fish with the ginger, garlic, chili pepper, and the whites of the onion, as well as the capers and their brine. Steam the fish until it is just done, which will depend upon your fish and the heat of your stove—start checking at around 7 minutes. When you can effortlessly insert a chopstick in the thickest part of the fish, remove the plate from the steamer and pour off the salty juices.

3. Array the onion greens down the center of the fish and drizzle the soy sauce on top. Heat the oil in a wok until it almost starts to smoke, and then pour this evenly over the green onions. Serve hot.

Fish, synchronicity, Laurie Colwin & laughing at your food

As I enthusiastically pursued my lengthy love affair with Jiangsu cuisine, I started thinking long and deeply about fish. Musing over my favorite taste memories, I recalled that some of the best seafood and freshwater fish I'd ever tasted were from Suzhou, Hangzhou, and Shanghai restaurants. 

And each one was different. A good number of these had truly inspired sauces over barely poached fish (like West Lake Vinegar Fish, which is served in a slightly tangy and very gingery pool), others are zingy with ketchup and touches of chili and even more ginger (as in that Bombs over Tokyo I mentioned earlier), and still others are so subtle that I tend to eat them in reverent silence. And that last one is what I want to talk about today.

This is an introduction to one of the gentlest of dishes, a delicately seasoned fish that is steamed with Chinese ham, shiitake mushrooms, thin slices of ginger, and spoonfuls of Shaoxing rice wine. This simple array of ingredients somehow results a meditation on the art of fish cookery. Unlike some of the other dishes I've written about here - you know, the ones that set off fireworks in your mouth and do the mambo on your tongue - this is nothing less than subtle.

The mysterious image on Colwin's book*

But first a word about synchronicity, which according to Wikipedia is "the experience of two or more events that are apparently causally unrelated occurring together in a meaningful manner." I was struck by nothing less than synchronicity itself when I picked up my new copy of the late food writer Laurie Colwin's Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen (1988), a book I hadn't even thought about in ages but recently came across again in a bookstore, flipped open the book to page 68, and read :

"About a million years ago I was taken out to dinner by a professor of Chinese studies. He took me to a real Chinese restaurant (as opposed to one of those places full of plastic dragons and chow mein) in Chinatown and proceeded to order one of the most fabulous dinners I had ever eaten. The food was news to me.... [T]he centerpiece of the meal was a striped bass, steamed with black mushrooms, strips of ginger, scallion and Smithfield ham. At the first taste of that fish, I began to laugh. My companion gave me a worried look... But it was the food that made me laugh. It was so wonderful and unexpected, so totally new I hardly knew how else to respond."

Isn't that the perfect description of what happens when you're young and are given a taste of something new and unexpected? She was only in her early twenties at the time, and her senses probably were overwhelmed. So she laughed. 


And she probably would have laughed over its very unhelpful name: qingzheng xianyu, or steamed fresh fish. Nothing in that title even hints at the delicate flavors that are woven together here. But this is Jiangsu cuisine, after all, so Chinese ham and fresh shiitake mushrooms and Shaoxing wine practically are givens. To this simple dish I've added fresh bamboo shoots, since they're in season now and add a bit of crunch. Finally, if you happen to have a piece of caul fat lying around the freezer, this is a good place to use it wrapped around the fish instead of adding plain old oil, as the fat melts into the fish and sauce, turning it into something truly worth smiling about.

The "sandwich"

Steamed fish Jiangsu style 
Qingzheng xianyu 清蒸鮮魚 
Jiangsu
Serves 4 as part of a multicourse meal

1 fresh, mild-flavored fish, about one pound
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 large (or 2 small) fresh shiitake mushroom
1/2 fresh or frozen bamboo shoot, optional
8 thin slices of Chinese ham, about 1" by 2"
1 inch fresh ginger, thinly sliced
2 green onions, trimmed and shredded
3 tablespoons Shaoxing wine
2 tablespoons fresh vegetable or peanut oil
Black pepper

1. Clean and scale the fish, pat dry with a paper towel, and either filet both sides or butterfly it by splitting it down the belly and flattening the whole fish. Cut 4 deeply diagonal slashes into each filet or side of the fish. Sprinkle the salt inside and outside the fish and rub it gently into the flesh.

2. Remove the stem from the cleaned mushroom and slice the mushroom into 8 long pieces. If you're using the bamboo shoot, slice it thinly and boil it in salted water until tender (about 10 minutes for fresh and 2 minutes for frozen), and then drain the shoots.  

3. Make a little sandwich of a slice of mushroom, optional bamboo shoot, and ham, and then stuff it into one of the slashes in the fish. Repeat with the rest of the mushroom, bamboo shoot, and ham until the slashes on both sides of the fish are filled. Lay the filets or whole fish on a heatproof plate that easily fits into your steamer. Sprinkle any leftover bamboo shoots on top, as well as the ginger, green onions, wine, and oil, and then dust it with a few grinds of black pepper. 

4. Bring the water in your steamer to a full boil and place the platter with the fish in the steamer. Steam the fish until done, which will be 10 to 20 minutes depending upon the fish and how hot your steamer is. As soon as the fish is done, serve it immediately.

( * This image is a detail of the painting Masterchef, 2005, by Lincoln Seligman/Bridgeman Art Library, that illustrates the cover of Vintage Books 2010 edition of Home Cooking.)