Soy Glazed Snapper with avocado, mango and pink grapefruit, candied chillies, crispy shallots and lime syrup dressing.

A few friends over for a Christmas Eve dinner was a good enough excuse to whip up two of Ezard's recipe for my challenge. However, shopping for fish on Christmas eve, isn't the best idea - everything goes up dramatically in price- even at my favourite fish shops in Victoria St, Richmond. At least I did manage to get up and arrive there as the shops opened, so I avoided the rush busy Christmas rush.

This dish just screams summer to me, with the Mango, Grapefruit and Avocado Salad, with lightly cooked Snapper, fresh from the ocean.



This dish has 5 parts, the salad, the lime-syrup dressing, the sticky soy glaze, the Crispy Shallots and then the fish itself. For quite simple sounding recipe, it was actually quite time consuming, to prepare each individual part of the dish. As I've said before in my other blog, I reckon Ezard's recipes are the reason why apprentices were invented! Unfortunately mine was on holidays in Darwin (Hi Rach!!) so it was me flying solo on this one.

First is the soy glaze. Basically you're just reducing a mixture of 2 soy sauces and honey until it's the consistancy of Jam.


Next is the lime syrup dressing, which is basically a reduced palm sugar syrup, with lime juice, lime rind and chillies. The recipe actually make way more than you need for this dish. It's a very sweet and chilli hot dressing, but the cool, slippery fruit balances out any real heat from the syrup.


Next is the crispy Shallot garnish. This is a mixture of deep fried shallots, chillies, garlic and ginger. I actually bought a snazzy deep fryer just for the purpose of my Ezard Challenge. There's a fair bit of deep frying involved, so it's going to come in very handy, I'm sure!


The salad was a bit time consuming, especially trying to excavate the mango and avocado from their skins, keeping them visually appealing. Then you have to dice them into 1cm dice. The ruby grapefruit I had never had before, mainly because I remember grapefruit as being so sour it wasn't edible. My Mum used to sprinkle it with sugar and leave it overnight to make it edible at all. This one did have a hint of sourness, but was sweet at the same time. Perfect for Thai style cooking. The salad also has Ezard's candied chillies, which I just love- they look great, especially in with the fruit. There's also a handful of vietnamese mint in there for some minty greenery.


This is the Salad, all nicely plated up, but when I put the fish on top, it kind of wrecked the presentation of the salad. You also drizzle some of the syrup on the salad.

From here, you basically fry the fish, skin side down and then coat with the soy glaze and transfer to a hot oven until cooked. Then you remove it, and cut the fillets in half and lay nicely on top of the salad. Drizzle some syrup around the plate and garnish with some crispy shallot mix. This dish was a very easy one to prepare, if not a little time consuming, but hey, the best restaurant in Melbourne really isn't going to put 5 minute recipes in their book now are they?
I love fruit with fish, especially during Summer. When the fruit is teamed with lime juice and chilli, you've got yourself a winner. My only recommendation is to avoid cooking this around Christmas or Easter, when fish is expensive!!