Grandma's Shanghai Smoked Fish 上海熏魚

This wonderful dish was one of my 奶奶 grandma's homemade specialities, the Shanghai Smoked Fish 上海熏魚, a very famous Chinese traditional dish that is actually not smoked but prepared in such a way that the tender meat inside has a spiced and slightly smoky flavor while the outside is a delicious flavor infused crust.

My grandma used to prepare this dish whenever we got a chance to get the right kind of really big fresh fish.  I remember watching with big, big eyes as she expertly man handled an enormous fish, deftly cutting here and there with a big sharp cleaver.  Grandma fighting a fish!  And the results of her victory over the fish...my oh my, just yummilicious!  Her smoked fish was quite famous in our family.

Of course I didn't realize just quite how yummilicious gram's smoked fish was until I grew up and discovered to my dismay that the Shanghai Smoked Fish served in Hong Kong restaurants were not even close to the deliciousness of Grandma's.  Not even an itty bitty close as a matter of fact.  

Out of this frustration we decided to try to make it ourselves and have recreated our own version of Grandma's Shanghai Smoked Fish, or 上海熏魚, a version that I am proud to say is pretty darn close to Grandma's!

Lychee Jam

Oh jam it!  Presenting our delicately sweet and tenderly lush pink jam made from the Queen of Fruits the luscious Lychee 荔枝!

That's right my friends it's time to run to your nearest Chinese market and stock up on these seasonal beauties while they last.  We love lychees way too much in this house and always end up indulging a bit too much on them.  But heck why not they only come around once a year!  This year though we got a gift of a whole box full of lychees, a whole boxful!  What to do with a whole boxful of lychee?  

After eating as much as we could I decided to turn some of it into a batch of our Luscious Lychee Ice Cream (our most favorite homemade fruit ice cream!) and the rest I decided to try to make a Lychee fruit jam, which I have never attempted before.  

After a nervous planning and setting out, gosh darn it, the results are totally worth the effort, our homemade Lychee Jam came out tinted a gorgeous rosy pink and tasted ever so intensely of sweet, fresh lychee flavor with a delicate fragrance of summer florals!  Absolutely yummillicious!