Three Bean Chinese Steamed Fish 欖角豆豉味噌蒸魚

OM-Goshilicious!!  Here's a truly beautiful something whipped up by my 老公, our resident expert of all things steamed and fishlike.  A super sexy version of the classic Steamed Fish with Black Bean Sauce, perfect for that super special and mandatory fish dish for the Chinese New Year.  We call it the Three Bean Chinese Steamed Fish but that's kinda cheating cuz it's not actually three beans, it just looks like it.

Anyways...this Three Bean Chinese Steamed Fish, or 欖角豆豉味噌蒸魚, infuses a most interesting and tongue enticing combination of three traditional flavors, the Chinese black olive, miso and Chinese fermented black bean, each quite strong on their own merit, to come together in a sauce that is the perfect complement to the delicate and tender steamed fish.

How to Make Chen Pi Dried Tangerine Peel 陳皮做法

Inspired perhaps by the seasonal chill finally blowing our way, I remembered this year, finally, to try making my own Chen Pi Dried Tangerine Peels (also known as Dried Mandarin Peels), or 陳皮.  These wonderful dried citrus peels are used as a flavoring agent in both savory and sweet dishes in Chinese cuisine as well as being used as an ingredient in Chinese medicine to help digestion and relieve nausea and cough.  

Every year come early autumn I've seen fruit vendors at the wet market making the chen pi, hanging the graceful loops of drying citrus peels topsy turvy from every nook and crook they could find and have always wanted to try making it at home.  

Chen Pi is, after all, what the Cantonese would call an essential in the Chinese kitchen, the flavor of this humble dried tangerine peel is out of this world unique, based in citrus but much, much more nuanced, with an aromatic slightly bitter taste that whets the appetite and prepares the palate for more.  As the Chinese saying '苦盡甘來' goes: 'When bitterness ends, sweetness begins.'