Kollontai's steamed white fish with soy butter
Ten minutes, one plate, barely any washing-up
Doubles by using two fillets in the steamer at once, and doubling the rice and soy butter.
Steaming asks nothing difficult of a piece of fish. No pan to watch, no butter to burn, only gentle heat that leaves the flesh opaque and barely holding together, the way white fish should be for anyone whose gut is doing its best to keep up. The whole flavour of the dish sits in the soy butter poured over at the end: butter melted slowly with a few slices of ginger until it smells faintly warm, the ginger then lifted out entirely, soy sauce stirred through the last of it. Steamed white rice takes on the same butter where it pools at the edge of the plate. It is the kind of dinner you can put together one-handed, and the only part that needs your attention is lifting the ginger back out.
From the chronicle · Stockholm, 1938
The old Swedish cook who ran the fish kitchen in Gothenburg where I worked the winter of 1969 had kept the kitchen at the Soviet legation in Stockholm thirty years earlier, and she talked about the envoy the way cooks talk about the one employer who ever thanked them. Kollontai was sixty-six in 1938, and in those years she was called to Moscow more than once, went, and came back, which a good many of her colleagues did not. The cook said she came back thinner and ate nothing for a week, and then ate this for a month. A stomach that has spent a summer waiting for a knock on the door does not want anything it has to work at. So the fish was steamed, never fried, until it barely held together, and the butter was warmed with a few slices of ginger and then every slice was lifted out again, so what went over the plate was flavour with nothing in it. She stirred something salt and dark into the butter at the end. By 1969 it was soy sauce, and I never asked what it had been in 1938.
The people, places and dates are real. The meal and the conversation are not. Read more about the chronicle.
Ingredients
Contains: Fish, Gluten, Soya, Milk
- 75 gwhite rice, basmati or long-grain, rinsed
- salt
- 30 gunsalted butter
- 3 slicefresh ginger, sliced, to infuse and removeHospitals differ
Ginger (infused and removed): Hospitals differ
Why the preparation matters. Slice it and simmer it to flavour the liquid, then remove every piece. It is never eaten.
Where hospitals differ. Ginger is a spice, and the leaflet this book follows lists spices under avoid. Infusing it and removing every piece leaves flavour behind without any residue.
If your team says no. Leave it out, or simmer a strip of lemon zest, lifted out before serving, for a cleaner note.
Sources: East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust, Department of Nutrition & Dietetics, St George's University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
More about ginger (infused and removed) - 1½ tbspsoy sauce
- 1cod or haddock fillet, about 150 g, skinless and boneless
Method
Put the rice in a small pan with 130 ml of water and a small pinch of salt. Bring it to the boil, cover the pan, turn the heat right down and cook for 10 minutes, until the water has gone and the surface is pitted with small holes.
Slide the pan off the heat and leave the lid on for another 5 minutes, so the rice finishes in its own steam. Fluff it with a fork before it goes on the plate.
Meanwhile, melt the butter gently in a small pan with the ginger slices over a low heat. Let it infuse for 3 to 4 minutes without letting the butter brown, then lift out every piece of ginger.
Stir the soy sauce into the ginger butter, take the pan off the heat and leave it somewhere warm.
Steam the fish fillet over a pan of gently simmering water, covered, for 6 to 8 minutes, until it turns opaque all the way through and flakes easily when pressed.
A covered plate in the microwave on medium for 3 to 4 minutes does the same job, if that is easier on the day.
Warm the soy butter through for a few seconds if it has started to set, then spoon the rice onto a warm plate, set the fish alongside and pour the butter over the fish.
Watch-points
- The fish is skinless and boneless here. Run a finger over the fillet before it goes into the steamer, in case a bone remains.
- Infuse the ginger slices in the melted butter, then lift out every piece before the soy sauce goes in. None should reach the plate.
- Use white rice, cooked until every grain is tender through.
Some hospitals allow slices of ginger to be left in a broth or a sauce; the leaflet this book follows does not. Leave it out if you have been told to.
Stoma note: The rice here thickens stoma output, which can help on a loose day.
Make it more nourishing
- Use a thicker fillet, closer to 200 g, rather than a wide, thin one. More fish, no change to the method.
- Fork 15 g of butter through the rice while it is still steaming. That is about 110 kcal, and the grains separate better for it.
- Double the soy butter and spoon the extra over the rice as well as the fish.
Swaps
- Instead of cod or haddock, use any skinless white fish fillet such as pollock or hake
- any firm white fillet steams the same way
- Instead of white rice, use rice noodles cooked soft, or a small bowl of plain mash
- both take the soy butter the same way on a day when rice feels like too much
The foods in this recipe
Each of these has a page of its own, with how to prepare it and where hospitals differ.