Yu Sang (Chinese Ceviche)

Continue from the last post, this is my version, if you had yu sung before it could be very different from mine.


Ingredients:

200 -250g of sushi grade salmon or tuna
1 carrot about 120 - 150g
about 200g of mooli or daikon
2 stalks of spring onion
1/2 medium red onion
about 50 - 60g of sushi style sweet pickled ginger
1 chunk of ginger, use tenderer part if you can
1 large red chilli
small handful of coriander
handful or roasted peanut*
about 25g of glass noodles or bean thread vermicelli
1/2 cup of oil for deep frying

for the dressing
100g of chinese plum sauce
Juice from 1 decent size lime
about 1 tbsp of light soy sauce
about 1 tbsp of roasted sesame oil
pinch of freshly ground pepper


Method:

1. Prepare the vegetables. Shred or cut carrot, mooli, spring onion and fresh ginger into superfine long thin strips. If you have one of those Japanese mandoline, it makes prep work a lot easier (not for the spring onion). If not just cut as fine as you possibly could. Squeeze out any excess water from the shredded mooli. Cut the pickled ginger into around 3mm thick strips. Rougly chopped a small handful of coriander and leave a few whole leaves for garnish. Thinly sliced the red onion.
2. Make the dressing by mixing the plum sauce, lime juice, enough soy sauce to taste, sesame oil, shredded fresh ginger and chilli. The plum sauce is quite sweet, if you don't like the dressing too sweet add in the plum sauce a bit at a time till you are happy with the taste and add more lime juice if you like it sharp.
3. Then prepare the fish. If it is with skin, remove that and remove any pin bones. Cut into thin slices. Mix 3/4 of the dressing with the fish and let it stand for about 10 minutes up to 1 hour if you want to make it in advance. Reserve the remaining dressing for later.
4. Crushed the roasted peanuts.
5. Cut the dried glass noodles to about 8 - 10 cm long using a kitchen scissors, split them up loosely. Heat about 1/2 cup of oil in a wok till quite hot, take about few strands of noodles and drop into the hot oil. The noodles will frizzle and expand a lot. Take them out as soon as they expand and leave on paper towel to absorb excess oil. Continue frying the rest of noodles till finished. Do not fry these noodles too early they could go chewy, if you want to do it in advance warm it up in the oven to crispen up before use.
6. Then build the salad by mixing the vegetables (except the pickled ginger) together. Pile this on a large plate, sprinkle the pickled ginger on top, then surround the plate with fried noodles. Pile on the marinated fish on top, sprinkle on any remaining dressing if you wish. Sprinkle with crushed peanuts and ready to eat
7. This recipe is enough for 2 - 3 generous portions. When you serve this dish, everyone gets to toss the salad, tossing is a symbol for good luck for the Chinese.

* I always use freshly roasted peanut using raw red skin peanuts roasted in a dry pan medium heat and stirring all the time till the peanuts turned light brown. Then let cool and remove the skin using a colander. I like this unsalted freshly roasted peanuts more than the ready to eat roasted and salted peanuts from the supermarket. If you can't be bothered or don't have time use the packet.