Dace or mud carp fish 鲮鱼 is an icon of Shunde cuisine. Dace fish has been part of Shunde peoples' lives for over 2,000 years!
Shunde is a district of the city of Foshan. Shunde is located about 80km south of Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province. Shunde is a UNESCO City of Gastronomy, reputedly the cradle of Cantonese cuisine, hometown of celebrated chefs and a food capital of China.
Shunde was a centre of silk production since 2,000 years ago. From Shunde, the silk was sent on camels or shipped around the world through Guangzhou city.
Shunde devised an ecosystem to maximise silk production - they built dykes and planted mulberry trees on them. The silk worms were fed mulberry leaves and their silk harvested.
The faeces from silk worms were fed to dace fish in the ponds surrounded by mulberry dykes. The faeces and sludge from farming dace fish were collected as fertiliser for mulberry trees. Traditional silk production is gone but the ancient dykes and dace ponds are still in use in Shunde today.
Cantonese use dace fish in many dishes from steamed to the iconic canned dace fish with black beans.
Stuffed dace fish is one of the must try dace dishes in Shunde.
Cantonese like their ingredients fresh, preferably alive and vigorous. So live dace is used for this dish.
The fish is scaled, gutted and cleaned. The skin and meat are carefully separated by hand without breaking the skin. A skilful chef can, after a few cuts, pull the skin from the meat like pulling a hand out of a glove.
Fish bones are removed. Dace fish have lots of bones.
According to one of the theories, stuffed dace fish dish was created to allow the elderly and young children to enjoy dace fish without the risk of choking on fish bones
The removed meat is divided between white and red meat. Only white meat is used for the stuffed fish dish, while the red meat is usually used to make fish congee.
The white meat is then beaten with the back of a chopper and smacked till the fibres are stretched and is almost a paste. Then, it is folded together with diced scallion, water chestnut, Chinese ham, dried shrimp, black fungus, glass (mung bean) noodles, parsley, chive, dried orange peel, salt, sugar, pepper, a starch flour usually corn (binder), oyster sauce, lean pork meat, pork fat, etc. Lots of ingredients! but most chefs just pick a few for their rendition.
The fish paste and aromatics mixture is packed back into the "purse" of fish skin and its head.
The remade fish is then pan / wok fried in oil till the outside is well browned.
Some chefs steam the browned fish to cook it further.
The cooked fish is cut into thick bite size pieces. Then dressed with a sauce made with soy sauce, aromatics, oil and thicken with starch. Garnish with parsley and serve.
This dish is easy to describe but much, much more tedious and difficult to make well.
When you enjoy this deliciously savoury fish dish with myriad textures, remember its link with Shunde's past as a silk production centre, the Silk Road and one of China's main point of contact with the outside world since 2,000 years ago.
Written by Tony Boey on 9 Feb 2025
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