Basa fish (Pangasius bocourti), black rice, stir fried baby leaf mustard with garlic and pickled baby lotus shoots.
The fish is known in English as swai, river cobbler, cobbler, basa, pangasius or panga depending on region. Here in China it is farmed and known as 巴沙鱼 (bā shā yú), In its native Vietnam it is cá basa and in Japan バサ and Korea 베트남메기. It is also farmed in those countries.
I breaded it in yellow panko after a long hunt for such panko which didn’t use cØrn to supply the yellow colour. Most do. But I succeeded! The other half of the fillet was also eaten.
The black rice is sometimes known as ‘forbidden rice’, referring to a legand that it was once reserved only for the emperors family, although there is little evidence for that, More likely it was only consumed by the upper classes due to its scarcity and resultant high prices.
The lotus root is bought already pickled in white rice vinegar. The pickled chilli is from the pickle bag.
