A few weeks ago my parents came to visit me. My dad loves fishing, so they brought me some whole fish from his most recent catch to freeze and use later. I finally had a chance to defrost the fish this week, and today I cooked it "hong shao" style with a lot of ginger and green onions. I used this easy and simple recipe from Saveur. It smelled like my mom's hong shao yu - deliciously aromatic - but next time I would use half dark and half light soy sauce. The Saveur recipe required all dark soy sauce, which made the dish too sweet and not salty enough. The original recipe is listed below.
Hong Shao Yu from Saveur
Yield: 2 servings
INGREDIENTS
2 tbsp. peanut oil
1 cleaned whole carp or sea bass (about 1 lb.)
1 bunch scallions, trimmed into 7" pieces
1 1" piece ginger, sliced into "coins"
1/4 cup shaoxing jiu (Chinese rice wine)
1/4 cup dark soy sauce
3 tbsp. sugar
DIRECTIONS
For hong shao yu, heat a 14" flat-bottomed wok over medium-high heat. Swirl in peanut oil; add fish. Cook, turning once, until golden, 1–2 minutes per side. Transfer fish to a plate.
Add scallions and ginger to wok and stir-fry until scallions begin to wilt, 20–30 seconds. Add 3/4 cup water, rice wine, soy sauce, and sugar; bring to a boil.
Return fish to wok, cover, and reduce heat to medium-low; simmer until cooked through, 7–10 minutes. Transfer fish to a platter and arrange scallions on top. Increase heat to high; boil liquid until reduced and thickened, 8–10 minutes. Pour sauce over fish.