Whole Cooked Crispy Snapper & Noodles

Whole-cooked, Crispy Snapper
with Asian Style Noodles

Recipe by Rudy Parlak

Prepare the snapper:

- Pan sized snapper about 1kg
- Scale, gut and gill the snapper
- Slice three deep cuts diagonally across the fish

Prepare flour mix:

- 1 cup of self-raising flour
- 1/2 teaspoon of oregano
- ¼ teaspoon of paprika
- Salt & pepper
- Mix all ingredients together in a bowl
- Rub the flour mix into the slices and all over the snapper to coat it
- Leave the fish to absorb the flavour mix while you prepare the sauce.

Sauce:

- 50g of fresh ginger
- 2 garlic cloves
- Half an onion
- 1 medium chilli with OR without seeds
- 1 small tin of coconut cream 100ml
- Salt + pepper
- ½ Teaspoon of curry powder
- 2 Kaffir lime leaves OR 3 regular lime leaves
- 1 cup of cream
- Tablespoon of maple syrup
- 1.5 cups of capsicum juice OR white wine OR fresh homemade chicken stock
- A stem of lemon grass (use only the bottom quarter)

METHOD:

- Pre heat the oven to 200C
- Finely dice the ginger, garlic, onion, chilli, lemon grass and lime leaves or blend all the ingredients in a blender
- In a saucepan bring the juice to the boil (capsicum juice, white wine OR chicken stock – whichever you have chosen to use)
- Add the freshly chopped ingredients
- Once the juice begins to evaporate, introduce the cream and coconut cream (Do not allow to boil)
- Allow to simmer until a quarter of the liquid has evaporated and the mixture becomes thick and creamy.

While the sauce simmers, cook the snapper and the noodles:
- Pour approximately 2cm of oil into a deep pan
- Bring oil to the boil
- Shallow fry each side of the snapper until golden brown in colour.
- Place snapper in oven for max 3 min.
- While the snapper is in the oven and the sauce is simmering,
boil the Asian style noodles for 2 min.

- Serve the whole cooked snapper on top of the Asian style noodles
- Pour the sauce over the fish and noodles.

Complement this magnificent dish with a delicious chilled Portside Pinot Gris from Matakana.

This article is reproduced with permission of NZ Spearo Magazine 2009 Re-publishing elsewhere is prohibited