Roasted fish with a hot, sour and sweet sauce

Ingredients

4 whole fish (gurnard, sea bass or bream), 300-400g each, scaled and trimmed — or use fillets instead
75ml fish sauce, plus extra as needed
Vegetable oil
50g shallots, thinly sliced
25g garlic, thinly sliced
3 red bird's eye chillies, thinly sliced
50g palm sugar
30g seedless tamarind pulp
4-8 tbsp water (double it if the tamarind paste is dense)

Method

Preheat the oven to 220°C/Gas 7. Slash each fish three times on each side, place in a shallow dish and pour over the fish sauce, working it into the slashes and cavity. Reserve about 50ml of the sauce
Heat 1cm of oil in a frying pan over medium-high heat. Fry the shallots until crisp and golden, then drain. Fry the garlic until crisp and golden, then drain. Fry the chillies for a few seconds until lightly golden, then drain
Add the sugar, tamarind pulp and water to the reserved fish sauce. Bring to the boil, stirring to break up the tamarind, and simmer for about 1 minute until thickened. Strain through a sieve, pressing through with a wooden spoon
Transfer the fish to a lightly oiled roasting tin and roast for 12 minutes until the flesh is opaque and comes away from the bone easily (55°C on a probe)
Bring the sauce to a gentle simmer and stir in half the fried shallots, garlic and chilli. Plate the fish, spoon over the sauce, and scatter the remaining fried aromatics on top

Notes & thoughts

Took this from the cook book that Caron gave me. Wow, was this dish great — however I'd use fillets instead of a whole fish next time, it was more trouble than it's worth scaling and cleaning it myself. Consider brushing the skin in oil and salt to crisp it up. I'd also double the amount of sauce — the tamarind paste was very dense, so I doubled the water too.