Fish With Fresh Tomato Sauce (Ca Chien Sot Chua Ngot)

There have been unofficial requests for Vietnamese food lately and since there was still quite a lot of ingredients left from our recently concluded "Thai food week at the tummies'" I decided Vietnamese might be the way to go. Although not a cuisine I was familiar with til about 10 years ago, I am quite confident cooking it now thanks to all the practice I had with the help of Mai Pham's "Pleasure Of The Vietnamese Table"*. This is a very simple but delicious dish but you have to make sure you are using the best tomatoes you can lay your hands on.

P.S *This is a wonderful book on Vietnamese food. It is very informative with easy to follow recipes, from street food to precious family recipes. You might need to use your imaginations a little as there are only a few black and white photos in the book.

recipe adapted from "Pleasures Of The Vietnamese Table"

serves 4 as part of a Vietnamese meal

you'll need;

600 g of rockling fillet*

3 garlic cloves, chopped

2 shallots, minced

2 tbs of dried chili flakes

2 tbs of sugar

3 tbs of fish sauce

3 vine ripen tomatoes*, cut into 1 cm cubes

3/4 cup of chicken stock

corn flour solution

1 red chili, julienne

1/2 cup of coriander leaves

2 spring onions, julienne

juice of one lime (optional)

* I think it will make the dish even more attractive if different colour tomatoes are used.

Prepare the ingredients.

Saute garlic and shallot then add in the chili flakes.

Add 2/3 of the tomotoes, stock and seasonings and continue to cook for 5 minutes. Thicken with corn flour solution and add in the rest of the tomatoes and warm through just before serving.

Fry fish in batches til lightly brown.

Pour the sweet and tangy sauce over the fried fish and garnish with spring onion, chili and coriander leaves. Squeeze the lime all over.

One word - DELICIOUS!

This has been submitted to Delicious Vietnam,  an event co-hosted by Anh of A Food Lover's Journey and Hong and Kim of Ravenous Couple. Hong and Kim are hosting the June event.