54 / How about fish for dinner … half cooked … literally!
Half cooked fish for dinner? Big deal, you may say, we've had raw fish for lunch! Well, yes, but how about one half of the fish cooked, and the other half still alive? Ooops, don't throw up onto your keyboard now.
The dish is a delicacy at the Chinese West Lake Restaurant - which also (for a while) was the biggest restaurant in the world, with 5,000 seats, 1,000 employees, 300 of which are chefs, 150 ducks per day and 5,000 kg of vegetables per week.
Back to the live (well, somewhat live) fish being served. In the tv documentary The Biggest Chinese Restaurant in the World on SBS, it was shown how to do it.
Grab the fish by the head, scale it, cut the fillets, gut it (I didn't see exactly to which degree) and then - still holding it by the head - immerse 3/4 of the body in boiling oil to cook it. Finally pull it out of the oil and onto the plate to add the seasoning and sauce. You have to work really quick … rush it to the table - and hey, presto, the fish is still moving mouth and gills! Fresh as can be, surely - not, I'd say, a dish for animal liberationists to salivate over. If you feel sorry for the fish - you can instead have snake that way (they serve 200 a week); sneaky, shifty, slithering snakes … that'll teach 'em.