Salmon Head Soup

My Father was born in a small fishing village and because of that he loves seafood more than everything. And he shares this love for seafood with his children too. Since I was a kid, he brought me and my siblings to a seafood market at the harbour. He showed us how to choose fresh fish and how to recognize the different types of fishes, while enjoying fresh salty sea air and jumping around the busy harbour at the same time. Those times were one of the memorable times I have of my childhood.

Because of his love for seafood, everyday my mom would prepare a seafood dish escpecially for him. Almost everyday there's fried fish, our most favourite type is silver pomfret deep fried until the fins are crispy, which only available in pacific ocean. Here in Berlin, I never have the opportunity to eat seafood like crabs, squids or fish everyday, as there's no ocean near Berlin. So seafood become a special meal for me and sometimes I indulge myself in fresh seafood bought in fish monger.

This salmon head soup is one of them, Salmon head is one of the cheapest part of fish, as the westerner don't really eat fish head. For one salmon head I only need to pay 1,50 and it's quite a big one



To choose a fresh fish, there's some step to follow:
1. The eye should be clear and not cloudy or red (filled with clotted blood)
2. The gill should be reddish with fresh blood and not greyish red
3. If you press on the fish flesh, it should be firm and fleshy and not soft and soggy

I post a picture of the from the salmon head that I bought, It was quite a fresh one



The ingredients you need for the salmon head soup

• 1 fresh salmon fish, cleaned and the gill removed
  
• 1 big stalk Bok Choy
• 1 piece Tofu
• 1 piece ginger, shelled and sliced finely
• 2 pieces garlic
  
• 2 shots of Shao Xing wine (you can use the little cap of the bottle to measure it)
  
• pepper and salt to taste
• a pinch of MSG
• 1 dried chilli (optional)
  

The first thing to do is make sure that the salmon head is cleaned and there's no scales attached, sometimes there are still scales on the neck part (Kama as the Japanese will call it)

Now you can first deep fried the fish to make the skin part crispy so that when it's cooked in soup it become puffy. I hate deep frying at home so I usually skip this step and directly cook it

So now how I do it

• Boil the fish head together with ginger slices and garlic pieces
• Once it started to cook put in the sliced tofu
  
• I like soup to be a little bit spicy so I add one dried chilli into it
  
• Season with Shao Xing wine, salt and msg
• Put in the sliced bok choy (I don't like my veggies to be extremly wilted) So at this point of time I turn off the heat and let the heat of the soup cooks the veggies naturally
• It's ready to be served