By Jenny Nguyen-Wheatley
“Cá Kho Tộ,” meaning fish braised in a clay pot, is a recipe that I grew up eating. Like most home-cooked Vietnamese meat dishes, it is heavily spiced and salted, meant to be served with a lot of white rice to stretch the meat further when feeding a large family.
The channel catfish I used for this recipe came from a 5-pounder my husband caught out of the Niobrara River near Spencer Dam in early summer. Look for catfish in cold, flowing water for the most tender, clean-tasting meat.
Instead of filleting the fish for this recipe, cut it into 1 to 1½-inch steaks, bone-in and skin on. This helps the fish stay intact when cooking. You may need a cleaver or kitchen shears to cut through the spine. When braised, the catfish and its skin absorb the sweet and spicy sauce, which turns gooey and delicious.
If you don’t have a clay pot, use a small Dutch oven or a thick pan with a cover. We bought our clay pot for $7 at the Vietnamese grocery store on 27th Street in Lincoln.
BRAISED VIETNAMESE CATFISH
Yield: 2 servings
Ingredients
- 1 pound of bone-in catfish steaks, skin on
- 4 tablespoons fish sauce
- 3 tablespoons brown sugar
- 1 inch fresh ginger, peeled and julienned
- 1 large shallot, minced
- 3 large cloves of garlic, minced
- 1 teaspoon freshly cracked pepper
- 3 tablespoons caramel sauce (or ¼ cup of water and 2 tablespoons table sugar)
- 1 green onion, sliced
- 1 can of Coco Rico Soda (coconut soda)
- 1 Thai chili, sliced
- 1 teaspoon olive oil
- 2 servings of cooked jasmine white rice
In a medium-size bowl, combine fish sauce, brown sugar, garlic, shallot, ginger and black pepper. Add catfish steaks and marinate for 30 minutes to an hour in the refrigerator. To make the caramel sauce, heat ¼ cup of water and 2 tablespoons of sugar to a rolling simmer. Mix frequently and wait until it turns dark brown, but do not burn. As it cools, the sauce will harden. To soften, add a little bit of water and slowly reheat. If you can find it, use pre-made caramel sauce sold in Asian grocery stores for convenience.
Heat olive oil in the clay pot over medium-high heat. Remove fish from marinade and sear to brown for 2 minutes on each side in the oil. Sear in batches if pot is not big enough. (Clay pots seem to heat better over gas stoves.) Place all the seared fish back into the pot. Pour caramel sauce over the fish, then pour in coconut soda to slightly halfway up the fish. Scoop out some of the ginger, garlic and shallot from the leftover marinade and add it to the pot.
Discard remaining used marinade. Cover and simmer for about 30 minutes. Check to make sure sauce does not reduce too much to avoid burning. Add a splash of soda if necessary. Once cooked, adjust seasonings with more fish sauce and/or sugar. Garnish with sliced green onion and Thai chili. Serve salty fish with lots of white rice.