Braised Yellow-Croaker

….Yellow croaker braised in a spicy sauce mixture with fiddleheads. My mother used fiddleheads instead of radish. It’s a very rare recipe, and a taste of my hometown. Few weeks ago, my sister YJ sent some dried fiddleheads from Seoul to me with a handwritten letter on how to use these dried fiddleheads. She wrote in a lot of detail. When YJ and I were young, we loved braised yellow-croaker, my mother’s dish. Fiddleheads tasted better than the yellow-croaker back then. I don’t know my mother’s exact recipe so I tried to make my own recipe….GOOD LUCK!

Serving: 3- 4

Time: 40 minutes plus 1 hr 30 minutes for making anchovy broth

Ingredients:

1. 2 yellow-croaker(1lb)
2. 3 cup fiddleheads
3. 3 Ts chili pepper
4. 3 Ts Mat-Gan-Jang
5. 2 Ts fish sauce
6. 1 Ts mirin
7. 1 Ts sake
8. 1 Ts garlic, minced
9. 1 Ts sesame oil
10. 5 stems green onion(3 Ts minced+sliced)
11. 3 cup anchovy broth
12. 2 red fresh pepper, sliced
13. 2 Ts perilla oil

Cooking Instructions:

1. Mix a spicy sauce, put the chili pepper, Mat-Gan-Jang, fish sauce, mirin, sake, garlic, sesame oil and 3 Ts minced green onion into a bowl. mix well and set aside.

2. Turn on the heat with medium heat in a pot and add the fiddleheads and perilla oil to stir fry them for 1–2 minutes.

3. Add the yellow-croaker, anchovy broth and mixed spicy sauce into the pot to boil them for 20 minutes.

4. After 20 minutes, turn it down to low heat and add the red fresh pepper and green onion to keep boiling them for 2 more minutes.

5. Turn off the heat and serve it.

Thank you so much! YJ.

How to use the dried fiddleheads:

1. Soak the dried fiddleheads with rice water into a pot for 12 hours.

2. Boil the soaked fiddleheads for 5–10 minutes. Set it aside to cool down.

3. Clean them with cold water 3 times. After cleaning them, soak it with cold water for 30 minutes.

4. Sift the fiddleheads. Trim them.