First, I had to separate the flesh from the bone by splitting both sides of all the fish. I did the splitting while the maid will scrape off the fresh that stick both on the bones and the skin of the fish by spoon.
The Spanish mackerel before cutting
The flash separated from the bone of the fish
The head and the bone of the fish with some flesh attached on.
ingredients for the fish paste
2 kg fresh Spanish mackerel
300g shrimps or pork(optional)
2 tsp salt
4 tbs corn flour
1/2 bowl of water
1 tsp pepper
In a bowl, put in the salt, corn flour, pepper and the water, mix well and leave aside. I use my food processor to grind the fish flesh by adding the corn flour mixture slowly. (traditional way will use the knife to chop the fish flesh until fine). Pour the well blended fish mixture onto the chopping board. Using both hand to roll up the fish mixture into round ball, then smash hard on the board.,continue doing this until the mixture become sticky and have a bouncing effect. This take about ten times of smashing and rolling.
The smashing of the fish flesh on the chopping board
The final stage of the fish paste
I can have many ways of cooking from my home made fish paste. First of all, the bones and heads can make a very good fish stock, I will share the recipe in the next blog. I cook porridge by the fish stock and add some of the fish paste for my father-in-law.
I keep the rest of the fish paste in food containers for future cooking. I will make some (yong tau foo) ,stuff fish paste in tofu, chili,lady fingers and other vegetables, I will cook fish ball noodle, make fish cake and so on.
