I just brought a new lunch box yesterday and decided to go frugal by packing lunch. For the few years I’ve been buying lunch because I’ve never been that good at making my own. Well, it’s not that bad, but it’s my cooking against all these fast food fat laden joints – no freshman at college can resit that.

The truth is, I just want to do something healthy for myself.

So yeah, I brought a new lunch box as a starting point, a sort of monetary investment to get me cooking. This pan fried honey fish is something I made up as an inaugural dish.

It’s not that hard. Just a piece of fish brought from the supermarket. I originally brought it fresh and then froze it myself because it’s just cheaper that way. I used australian salmon, or ‘kahawai’ by the way. It’s quite cheep over here in New Zealand, about half the price of most of the other stuff, that’s why I brought it. I like the soft texture it gives when cooked, a good contrast to the crunchy coating of this recipe. Uncooked, it has a light pinkish colour to its flesh and turns white once done. The best part is, even if you do over cook it slightly, it doesn’t get rubbery or hard like some other fishes I’ve had.

My shiny new yellow bento box with its red band. Not very big in appearance but can fit a lot of food in its two compartments.

My tasty pan fried honey fish – a nice light tinge of sweetness coating that permeates into the flesh of the fish. The bed of salad mix adds to the clean fresh tastes. A good low fat and healthy combination.

Anyway, enough of me, here’s the recipe. It’s really easy to make. In fact, it doesn’t even require much effort and packs in good flavours and texture for your lunch or dinner.

Tasty Pan Friend Honey Fish
serves: 1
Prep time: 10 minutes
Cook time: 5 minutes

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon thick oyster sauce
1 piece of fish fillet (the piece I used it about 15cm in length and 5cm width)

1/4 cup tempura flour/or just normal flour (works just as well)
1 tablespoon oil (to coat pan)

How to:

If your honey is a hard because it just came out of the fridge, give it a few seconds in the microwave to melt it down. Mix the honey and oyster sauce together. Add your fish and coat it. Cover and leave to marinate for 10 minutes.

Right before you’re about to pan fry your fish, coat it with the flour. Make sure to cover it completely, pat it down to make it stick if you have to.

Once ready to cook, heat up your pan with oil. I normally just use a non stick pan light coated with cooking oil spray. Now, about the heat, I set my stove to medium but because it may be different to your stove, when you put the fish it, the fillet should sizzle as if it was on a barbecue. I’m not sure how helpful this description is but if it makes no noise, then your pan is not hot enough. Take the fish off the pan and wait for it to heat up a little more. If it makes too much noise and threaten to set off your smoke alarm, the pan is too hot. If it is too hot and your fish is already in, don’t remove it, just lift the pan off the stove and hold it until it settles down to a nice comfortable sizzle. It shouldn’t spittle or else you’ve put in too much oil.

Now, about the fish. Leave it in the pan for a few minutes. You’ll have to use your judgement on this and only turn the fish once. Once you’ve flipped it, put a lid on it and let it steam for a minute or two to keep it moist. That should be enough to cook it thoroughly.

Volia! The meat part of your dish is complete. I hope it goes well. If you’re making more than one piece at a time, don’t overcrowd your pan or else you won’t be able to flip them all in time and end up burning some. Or maybe that’s just me…

In short:

1. Marinate with honey and oyster sauce.
2. Heat pan on medium heat. Fry fish in pan. Flip once, put a lid on pan for minute.
3. Serve or keep for the lunch box.

So this was my entire lunch for Wednesday. The other compartment consists of more salad drizzled with tonkatsu sauce as dressing, two cherry tomatoes, pickled ginger and rice balls mixed with seaweed, sesame seeds and hummus.

I hope you enjoy this easy to make and healthy dish.