Bruce Lawson’s Plaa menow (Fish in lime)

The second in a series of posts that bring together the two sides of my blog: Food and technology. I’ve asked the great and the good from the web standards community to share their favourite recipes.

Next up is a sumptious Thai dish from Bruce Lawson, web standards evangelist, co-author of Introducing HTML5, and a man with possibly the coolest tattoo ever.

Ingredients

Serves two people.

• 1 monk fish or sea bass (cleaned but with the head left on).
• 5 limes.
• 1 stick lemon grass.
• 3 lime leaves.
• 5 or 6 slices of galangal.
• 2 bulbs of garlic.
• 6 Thai small red chillies (very small, so very spicy).
• 4 tbsp sugar.
• 6 tbsp fish sauce.

Method

1. Put the fish into a dish for steaming. Then put the galangal, lemon grass (cut it in half), and lime leaves into the fish stomach.
2. Cover fish and put the dish in boiling water for 15 to 20 minutes. When the fish is cooked, take it out from the steam pot.
3. Chop the chillies and garlic into very small pieces and mix with the lime juice, sugar, and fish sauce. This sauce must have the 4 tastes that characterise Thai food: sour, spicy, a little bit sweet and a little bit salty.
4. Serve the fish with the sauce, and don’t forget to save the most succulent pieces of fish (the eyes and the cheeks) to give to your boyfriend/girlfriend!

Bruce’s notes

This is a recipe from Thailand, the home of my lovely missus and where I met her when we were both teachers in Bangkok. She teaches Thai cookeryfor a living now.