Dongfang Fish Braised with Sour Melon 东方酸瓜焖鱼

Dongfang Fish Braised with Sour Melon (东方酸瓜焖鱼) is a dish from Dongfang (东方) in which fish is braised with sour melon, a pickled melon that Dongfang people regard as their own ingredient. The version documented in Dongfang uses small sharks from the Dongfang fishing ground in the southern Beibu Gulf (北部湾) and goes by the name 'shark braised with sour melon' (鲨鱼焖酸瓜). In 2020 a version from the Fuxinggu Goose Restaurant (福兴谷鹅庄) was named one of the ten famous dishes of Dongfang.

Where it comes from

Wang Zhang (王章), head of Dongfang's tourism hotel and catering association, told Hainan Daily in 2019 that the dish started as ordinary home cooking and became a Dongfang speciality after hotels refined it. Fishermen in seaside villages such as Duntou (墩头) and Gangmen (港门) in Basuo town (八所镇) have a habit of boiling sea fish together with sour melon; when hotels took the dish up, they changed boiling into braising. Sour melon itself is a pickle from the years before refrigerators, and the same melon is also stewed with pork belly as a home dish.

Ingredients

Hainan Daily describes sour melon as a small watermelon that Dongfang people pickle; it comes with or without rind, and the skinless kind is used with shark. People's Daily Hainan says Dongfang sour melon is mostly made from the rind of seedless yellow-fleshed watermelons. The sharks usually weigh no more than 3 jin (1.5 kg) each and are sold by fishermen on the quay at Basuo New Port (八所新港) in the afternoon; restaurants and home cooks buy there.

How it is made

The troublesome first step is scalding the shark in hot water to remove the grainy 'sand' on its skin. The fish is then cut into pieces about 6 cm long and 2 cm wide and goes into the pan together with the sour melon. Once everything is ready, chef Yang Chengjian (杨成剑) told Hainan Daily, the dish takes five or six minutes. Kitchens differ mainly in the added ingredients, so some versions are sweet and sour and others are plainly braised.

Flavour and texture

The melon stays crunchy and picks up the taste of the fish, while the shark pieces are thick and solid, with no fishy smell. The Dongfang City Media Centre describes the finished dish as sour, spicy and savoury with a rich sauce, a classic local dish to eat with rice. Wang Zhang puts the melon first: the fish, he says, is there only to add savouriness.