Sweet chilli fish stirfry with sticky coconut rice

Today was a good day.

Mum woke me up earlier than I would really have liked, but did so in a cheery mood, asking if I could help her have a shower. Bear in mind that Mum hasn’t showered in over a year – she washes daily so she doesn’t smell bad, but has found the shower too intimidating to use – so I was expecting it to be a major trial.

In fact it went perfectly smoothly, with mum only asking for help once, when she realised she hadn’t picked up a towel to dry herself on. Then she dried herself off, had some breakfast, and settled in the living room with a cup of tea to watch daytime tv.

In the unusual peace I decided to get my laptop out and do some advance planning of posts for future posts. I promptly found out that mum still couldn’t deal with being alone and kept popping into my room, apologising for disturbing me and wandering out, only to pop back in five minutes later.

I did manage to make a start on a post about my ongoing taste test of Tesco mince pies (it’s hard work being a content creator, I tell you), and created the accompanying images. What I didn’t do was go through the rules for the Amazon Affiliates account I set up yesterday – yes, I’m starting to monetise my blog, I’m afraid, but I promise not to let it get intrusive – which I really must do before I start actually using it.

Then I went and sat in the front room with mum, and watched quiz shows, made jokes, messed around (a pretend sword fight with our index fingers, which I dramatically lost, made us both laugh hysterically), and generally enjoyed mum feeling well enough to enjoy life.

In between, we’d glance out of the window and observe that the weather was (still is) “really ‘orrible” (mum) or “properly manky” (me), and wonder if the pharmacist really was going to make it to our house after work with mum’s meds (he hasn’t, and even mum had to admit she doesn’t blame him, given the weather).

For dinner I cooked white fish, something that mum has previously asked me to cook more often. Of course, when I told mum what was for dinner she responded, to my great frustration, “oh – I don’t really like fish”. I really do wonder why I bother sometimes.

As mum had already indicated she wasn’t going to like dinner, I felt free to experiment a bit. I chopped the fish into bitesize pieces and coated it with cornflour seasoned with “spicy stirfry mix” from my spice blend Advent calendar¹As mum had already indicated she wasn’t going to like dinner, I felt free to experiment a bit. I chopped the fish into bitesize pieces, coated it with cornflour seasoned with “spicy stirfry mix” from my spice blend Advent calendar, and fried it until golden.

Then I removed it from the pan and poured frozen red onions, green beans, and sweetcorn into the same pan. Once they started to sizzle, I poured in some sweet chilli sauce, added the fried fish back in, and folded it all together.

I served it with sticky coconut rice (normal rice cooked with a chunk of creamed coconut and a pinch of salt added to the cooking water), which I had cooked mostly for my benefit as mum doesn’t like rice.

Except today she does: she spotted the rice, went “ooh, lovely!”, and served herself a generous pile. Luckily I cooked extra so there was enough for us both, but that does mean no leftovers for lunch tomorrow.

I thought it was really nice: frying the fish in what was in effect a light batter meant it didn’t fall apart, and gave it a really nice texture which wasn’t quite the same as fish cooked normally. It’s a technique from Chinese cooking, called “velveting”, that is usually used on things like chicken but apparently also works well with fish.

And on that note, with the rain still hammering down and the wind howling, I’ll take my leave. Hopefully I’ll still be here tomorrow and the Isle of Wight won’t have blown off course and be on its way to the Caribbean.

Although that doesn’t sound like a dreadful idea, when I put it like that.

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1. Did I mention that I bought myself an advert calendar containing little pots of spice blends? Well, I did, and it arrived today so I had fun opening five days’ of spices in one go. ↩︎