Last week I made the Stir-Fried Fish with Ginger and Scallions from The Wok cookbook by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt.

This recipe is very similar to last week’s Stir-Fried Fish with Wood Ear, Celery, and Oyster Sauce, swapping out the oyster sauce for Shaoxing wine and roasted sesame oil in the sauce and exchanging the mushrooms, garlic, and celery for more ginger and scallions.

The recipe was straightforward, except that the velveting left out the egg white, which I can only imagine is a mistake as the book’s basic velveting instructions call for an egg white and all of the other velveted recipes so far have used an egg white. The fish did come out tougher for this dish than last week’s, but I had to use frozen mahi mahi fillets this week versus the fresh I was able to find last week. I’m not sure how much difference that made in the final dish.

The flavor, like most velveted recipes so far, was delicate. My wife described it as “bland” and “not her favorite”, so she remains underwhelmed with the velveting results. The kids ate a piece of fish each, but did not go back for more.

I am cooking my way through J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook. Read more about it.