Crispy Barramundi with Green Apple Salad and Caramelized Pork
Every bite of this is like a flavour explosion in your mouth. Imagine a sweet, sour, salty and spicy taste, all at once and combined with crunchy and smooth textures. But be warned: You shouldn't eat too much of it in one go or you will regret it. It is just so rich.
Making this dish requires soaking the barramundi in fish sauce and then letting it dry again it in the fridge overnight to get the texture right. And cooking pork belly in your own master stock.
You will need to visit an Asian grocer to get a hand on many of the ingredients used. It’ll totally be worth it though.
Story
Queuing for a restaurant table is a very uncommon thing here in Germany. People either make a booking in advance or just walk in. At CHINCHIN, a Melbourne Institution, no bookings are accepted. I assume that otherwise the restaurant would just be booked out for several months, leaving zero chances for spontaneous visitors. Instead, you just show up and wait until a table is available for you. Which can take several hours on a busy day. Does this stop people from eating out there? Nope! The food is just too amazing to miss. Luckily, the waiters will note down your number and give you a call once its your turn. Leaving plenty of time for an aperitiv or two in the meantime.
The crispy barramundi & green apple salad with caramelised pork is a classic that we order each and every time we’re at CHINCHIN. It’s pure indulgence. The restaurants’ executive chef Benjamin Cooper published a cookbook with popular recipes from it’s menu. This salad is amongst them.
Recipe
Serves 4 as a light salad or 2 as a main meal
Pressed pork belly
1½ kg pork belly
You won’t need the whole pork belly for making this recipe. Pre-portion and freeze what you don’t need straight away for the next time. It’ll come in handy!
Master stock:
½ cup Mekong Whisky
½ cup shao hsing
1/3 cup dark soy sauce
80g yellow rock sugar (or palm sugar)
2 cloves of garlic
2 large knobs of ginger
1/3rd bunch of spring onions, roughly chopped
1 tsp cardamom pods
3 star anise
1 piece of cassia bark (alternatively, a cinammon stick)
You can strain and freeze the master-stock for future use after the pork belly is cooked!
Put all of the master-stock ingredients into a pot with 2 litres of water. Bring to a boil and wait until the sugar has dissolved. Add the pork belly, which should be completely covered with stock and lower the temperature to a gentle simmer. Braise the belly for about 3 hours.
Carefully lift the pork belly out, use straight away or keep in the fridge overnight. Ideally, you’re pressing the belly into a neat shape, using two cling-film covered baking trays and by putting something heavy on top. But don’t worry if you can’t be bothered to do so or you're suffering from fridge-squeeze syndrome - it still tastes great.
Nahm Jim:
4 green banana chillies
2 cloves garlic
¼ bunch coriander root
1 tbsp caster sugar
½ cup fresh lemon or lime juice
2 tbsp fish sauce
You can either use a mortar and pestle or a food processor to make the nahm jim. Pound our blitz chillies, garlic and coriander roots into a fine paste. Combine with the other ingredients, making sure that the sugar dissolves. Season with salt.
Barramundi and apple salad with caramelized pork
200g barramundi fillets (if you can’t get barramundi, use another white fish. Cod works for example)
Fish sauce (for soaking)
500g palm sugar
1/3 cup oyster sauce
2-3 tbsp soy sauce
500g pork belly, cut into bite-sized pieces
Vegetable oil (for frying)
2 tbsp roasted peanuts
2 tbsp crispy shallots
1 green apple, cut into matchsticks
½ bunch of mint leaves
½ bunch of coriander leaves
4-5 kaffir lime leaves, julienned
1 stem lemongrass, white part only, thinly sliced
½ cup of nahm jim
1 dried red chili, crushed (optional for extra spice)
Place the barramundi filet into a shallow dish and cover with fish sauce. Let sit for about 30-40 minutes. Take the fish out and place it on a rack in the fridge to dry out overnight. An oven or microwave rack will work, for example.
Add palm sugar, oyster sauce, soy sauce and ½ cup water to a heavy-based pan. Heat gently to melt the palm sugar. Bring to a boil and add the bite-sized pieces of pork belly. Simmer gently for about 15-20 minutes, remove from the heat, stir to get everything nicely coveren in caramel and let the pork sit in the caramel for about 15 minutes to cool.
Deep-fry the barramundi until crisp. Cut into bite-sized pieces. Mix the pork and some of the caramel with the peanuts and crispy shallots in a small bowl.
To assemble the salad, place apple, mint, coriander, lime leaves, lemon grass, fried barramundi, nahm jim and dried chilli (optional) into a bowl and toss.
Place your salad on serving plates. Build the pork belly up next to it.
Once you’re digging in, make sure you get a bit of everything in the same mouthful, to make sure you’ll experience the flavour explosion that I was talking about.