Pan Fried Moi

While working at Roy’s HK, I was introduced to Moi. It is now one of my favorite fishes… to eat. They used to do it deep fry it and serve with inamona jus, and they also used to filet it, steam it and dress it with Roy’s asian pesto (chinese parsley, scallion oil, mac nuts, etc). Once in a while supermarkets will have it. You can recognize it cause the nose looks kinda like a shark. Star Market University had it the other day, so I had to treat myself to it. It was scaled and cleaned, so less mess for me! It also says “island fresh” and “ocean farm raised” which means it came from one of the deep sea cages that they farm the Moi out in the ocean. Despite some of the environmental issues they’re still going and I’m glad that I get to eat this tasty fish. I like to just flour it and shallow fry it, and eat it with shoyu and rice. Let’s begin:

Since it’s already de-scaled and cleaned, we don’t have to do that. If it’s not, use a spoon and scrape from tail to head. It gets a little messy so do it in the sink with some running water or in a plastic bag or at the beach. To clean make an incision in the belly perpendicular to the fish. Pull all that crap out, including the lungs. Once it’s cleaned, score the fish on both sides.

Now sprinkle some garlic salt or whatever you like on the fish, get some in the scored grooves and inside the cavity. Now you coat it in flour:

I used whole wheat flour cause that’s all I had, but usually I would use all-purpose flour. So coat the moi nicely and now it’s ready for the frying. Heat a pan with a good amount of oil, enough the shallow-fry the buggah. Probably medium to medium-high heat.

As you can see, the fish doens’t quite fit the pan. I cut the tail, but you can cut the head off if you like. So give it a good fry on both sides til it’s nice and brown. Check if it’s done by pulling the scored pieces to the side. Once it’s done, drain it on some paper towels and plate it. Here I put some green onions and rice and dipped the fish in shoyu. Num nums.

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