Braised beltfish

Today I’d like to introduce you to a delicious, braised fish dish, made with a fish called galchi in Korean. It has a lot of names in English like hartail. cutlassfish, and ribbonfish, but I like beltfish, becaue it’s a very long, thin, silvery fish, and it looks like a shiny belt. Tender, delicate, and fatty, it’s a very popular fish in Korea and we braise it, make soup with it, or simply grill it. This recipe, galchi-jorim (갈치조림), is a spicy braised galchi stew, made from beltfish, radish, and onion.

The radish is a very important ingredient! I enjoy the radish in this dish, its role is to soak up all the good stuff from the fish, and for the fish to get all the good stuff from the radish. They go well together.

I used to always add sugar to my galchi-jorim (as I did in the galchi-jorim recipe in my first cookbook) but these days I’m cutting down on my sugar intake so in this recipe I add more onion. The sweetness is perfect for me, but galchi-jorim in a restaurant may be sweeter. If you really want it to be that sweet go ahead and add sugar.

Enjoy the recipe! Let me know how yours turns out!

Ingredients

Serves 2 to 4

• 1 pound packaged frozen pre-cut beltfish, thawed out in the refrigerator
• 8 ounces Korean radish (or daikon), peeled, cut into ¼ inch thick half-disks
• 1 medium onion (about 6 ounces), sliced
• 1 green onion, sliced
• 1 or 2 green chili peppers, sliced

For seasoning sauce:

• 8 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 teaspoon peeled ginger, minced
• ¼ cup soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon gochu-garu (Korean hot pepper flakes)
• ¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
• 2 cups water

Directions

Make the seasoning mixture:

1. Combine the garlic, ginger, soy sauce, hot pepper flakes, and ground black pepper in a bowl. Mix well and set aside.

Prepare the fish:

1. If using whole fresh fish, remove the head and guts and snip off the fins. Cut the fish into 3 to 4 inch pieces (frozen fish will have already been cut).
2. Rinse the fish under cold running water. Remove any intestines, and pull off any of the black film from inside of the fish body. You don’t need to wash it too thoroughly. Do it quickly, then rinse and drain and pat dry.

Cook:

1. Arrange the radish in the bottom of a large heavy skillet. Arrange the onion slices over the radish.
2. Place the pieces of fish on top, side by side.
3. Spoon the seasoning mixture over top of the fish. Add the water along the edges of the skillet so that the seasoning mixture remains on top of the fish.
4. Cover and cook over medium high heat for 15 minutes.
5. Open the skillet and add the green chili pepper and green onion. Spoon some of the broth over top a couple of times. Cover and reduce the heat to medium. Cook for another 15 minutes.
6. Uncover and spoon some of the broth over the top of the fish to season it evenly. Be sure not to move or turn over the fish because it’s so soft that it will break easily.
7. Reduce the heat to low and simmer for 5 minutes to cook the radish thoroughly.

Serve:

1. Remove from the heat and serve with rice and more side dishes (if you have them).

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