Mainland Southeast Asia · Volume 39, Broken Rice, Fermented Fish and a City Built on Borrowed Ground
Cá kho tộ
The Mekong Delta
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 10 minutes
- Researched
- 11 sources cited
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
A clay pot, a controlled caramel, and the fish sauce that runs through the whole cuisine, reduced to its most concentrated form.
As tradition built it
Serves 4. Marinate 10 minutes, cook 40 minutes.
Ingredients
- 800 g snakehead or catfish, cut into 1.5 to 2cm pieces
- 2 tbsp fish sauce
- 1 tbsp sugar, or caramelised palm sugar
- 1/2 tsp pepper, garlic, shallot and chilli to taste black pepper, garlic, shallot, chilli
- 200 ml water
- 1.5 tbsp nước màu (see the Ferment and Preserve Bench, below)
Method
- Marinate the snakehead or catfish for around 10 minutes in fish sauce, sugar, pepper, garlic, shallot and chilli.
- Transfer to a clay pot with the nước màu and about 200ml water.
- Cover and simmer over medium heat around 30 minutes, then reduce to the lowest heat once the liquid has halved.
- Continue simmering, uncovered towards the end, until the sauce thickens to a glaze and coats the fish, the fish firm rather than falling apart.
- Finish with a scattering of black pepper and sliced chilli.
What a modern chef changes
The vessel and the caramel, both read properly
Rungs 1 and 6
Method
- Build the nước màu by colour, not by a recipe's stated minutes, watching for cockroach-wing brown and the red shimmer before it goes anywhere near the fish.
- Use genuine Cambodian palm sugar (see Sourcing, below) for a gentler, more complex natural colour and flavour base than plain white sugar gives.
- Run a Big Green Egg indirect with a convEGGtor at a steady low temperature, replicating a real tộ's retained, even heat far more reliably for a first attempt than an unfamiliar clay vessel, or use a small enamelled cast-iron pot if the true clay pot is unavailable.