I've gone to Putien so many times because it has always been a trusted, time-honoured brand that I know I can count on. So it certainly wasn't a surprise when Putien @ Kitchener Road was awarded a Michelin one-star rating! It is very well-deserved. This time of the year, Putien's talented culinary team has designed another seasonal menu centred around the yellow croaker fish from the seaside city of Ningde, Fujian China.
To give you some background, these yellow croakers are freshly sourced from the farming breeding grounds of Xiapu where the nutritious mudflats are the largest in China and home to a huge variety of seafood! It is one of the rarest fish variety you can obtain in Singapore, so if you want to try this, you know it's at Putien!
The new menu now has five different dishes that includes the yellow croaker fish.These dishes are available from 2 September 2016 to 30 November 2016.
Let me introduce to you all of them now:
This 100-Second Stewed Yellow Croaker is my most preferred dish! This steamed is the favourite of renowned Taiwanese actress Lin Ching Hsia as well, despite her hating to eat fish! So much so that she actually invited Putien's chefs to her place to cook this dish for her. It is not hard to understand why this dish is so well-loved. This dish retains the original sweet flavour and taste of the yellow croaker with its simple stewing method, a distinct fragrance that relies a lot on its freshness. I really love this one, with its tender flesh meat that is amazing with the flavourful soup that has ginger in it. It is definitely very suitable for both children and elderly too.
The deep-fried yellow croaker would sit well with heavier palates. The croaker fish is marinated with peppercorn and seasalt before being deep-fried till a crisp to pair with the rice. It is done with well and must be complemented with rice, otherwise it could be slightly too salty. Of course, my palate tends towards the lighter tastes so if you are used to outside food, this will be just nice for you.
Next up! For people who can't survive without rice, this savoury stewed yellow croaker rice will serve you well! This is a traditional favourite cooked in the Hakka style with no shortcuts at all to preserve the fullness of flavours. It is no ordinary rice dish - is is thoroughly infused with the richness of the yellow croaker. The bones of this fish are first carefuly brewed into a hearty fish broth. Then the rice and yellow croaker fish are pan-fried before being stewed in the fish broth until the final drop of the broth is infused in the rice grains.
Let me deviate from the topic for a little while... I opted for warm barley for the first time at Putien and unwittingly, I decided this to be my favourite place to get warm barley ever. Not only is the barley water very thick and velvety smooth (I never thought that I needed to describe barley to such extent), the barley grains were chewy, soft and sweet. It was enjoyable to the last drop and I didn't even wanted to waste a single drop at all. What's more, the service staff replaced my empty barley cup with warm water at the perfect lukewarm temperature immediately. I was so impressed - indeed Michelin material.
OK back to the croakers: the next dish we tried was the Pan Fried Yellow Crockers dish made of the yellow croaker pan-fried till perfection of golden brown and then slowly stewed with special sweet house sauce. This is a tantalizing dish that is tender on the inside and nicely charred on the outside, without any heavy oily taste. It is pretty good and retained the tender moisture inside the croaker.
Finally, we had the yellow croaker soup with cauliflower, an iconic dish that has been in Putien for a long time now, except now they use yellow croaker fish as the baseflavour. It is rich with the natural sweet flavour of the fish along with the other ingredients in the soup, including tomato, coriander, ginger, spring onions and more. It gives a very homely feel to the dish which I really enjoyed, arguably my second favourite dish of the night. Then again, all the dishes were very well-executed, nothing short of my expectations from the chefs at Putien.
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