Archerfish, also known as industrial fish, scientific name Dali schizophrenia, is a unique freshwater fish produced in Erhai Lake.

The reason why it is called bowfish by the people is because this fish likes to breed or forage against the current, and when it encounters a mountain stream that cannot swim over, it will bow over and catapult up independently, so it is named bowfish.

When Yang Huairen saw the bowfish in this kitchen, he was really surprised, the delicious bowfish is just a legend in his impression, because in the Erhai Lake in later generations, the bowfish is about to become extinct, and it has become a national second-class protected animal.

Since the seventies and eighties of the twentieth century, the environment of the water system around Erhai Lake has been polluted, resulting in a sharp decline in the number of bowfish with high water quality requirements.

Later, in order to improve the living conditions of local fishermen, several other economical freshwater fish with strong reproductive capacity were introduced to Erhai Lake, which led to the further squeeze of the space for the survival and breeding of the bowfish, and it is not surprising that the bowfish eventually faced extinction.

But at this time, bowfish is still the most dominant freshwater fish in the Erhai Lake, and the swordfish still occupies a dominant position in the catches of many fishermen along the Erhai Lake.

Yang Huairen suddenly felt that it was really not all bad that he was caught by the Barbarian King to cook for him, otherwise he would not have had the opportunity to make a bowfish himself and be lucky enough to taste the deliciousness of bowfish.

There is a record in the "Dengchuan Prefecture Chronicles" that Dali "only has many fish, its color is like silver, narrow and long like a minnow, no scales and few bones, delicious taste, produced in the Erhai Lake." ”

The Qing Dynasty poet Fan Shi once praised the poem: "The inner abdomen contains agar cream, and the round ridge is beautiful spring wine." Because the bowfish meat is fatty and fatty, and it melts in the mouth, Yang Sheng'an, a scholar of the Ming Dynasty, praised it after tasting it, and praised it as "Yukui".

It's just that although Yang Huairen has heard of the delicacy of bowfish, he has never made the delicacies of bowfish, and he needs to think about what method to use to cook the most delicious taste of bowfish.

The simplest and most direct way is to wash a bowfish without adding any flavors, boil it in water, taste the original taste of the ingredients, and then judge what kind of cooking techniques to cook and find the best way.

Yang Huairen tasted boiled bowfish in clear water, and felt that the meat of bowfish was fatty, smooth and tender, and it was indeed an excellent ingredient, but after careful tasting, there was also a special fishy taste.

If you use the steaming method, it seems that simple marinating is not enough to remove this slight fishy smell, and the method of braising is easy to destroy the delicate taste of bowfish, so after thinking about it, Yang Huairen thought of sauce grilling.

Miso grill, in the simplest terms, is to use the prepared sauce and water to slowly stew the way, so that the bowfish can be heated evenly, and will not destroy the fatty taste of the meat because of the excessive cooking heat, and let the flavor of the sauce eliminate or cover up its own special fishy smell.

Fortunately, there is a local sauce stored in the kitchen, Yang Huairen tasted it, the taste is very local, the specific ingredients may not be clear, because some spices may be some unique local plants, Yang Huairen may not necessarily recognize it, but a variety of spices are compounded together, the taste is not bad, and it is also very flavorful.

In addition, Yang Huairen also found a familiar leaf, which is the basil leaf. When it comes to basil, the first thing that comes to mind is that it is a spice often used in Western cuisine.

In fact, the branch of basil is very extensive, and the use of basil in ancient China was thousands of years earlier than in the West.

It's just that the name of basil is given by foreigners, and in the south of the Yangtze River in China, most areas have branches of basil, and people everywhere call him differently, the most common is fish herb.

The southern part of China has a well-developed water system and abundant fishery products compared to the north, so fishermen eat fish and do not have professional cooking knowledge and tools, so they directly roast or boil it in the fire.

Without enough spices, the fish will inevitably have a fishy smell, and later people found that there is a wild plant that uses its leaves to squeeze out the water to pickle the fish, which can play a very good role in removing the fish.

It was also found that the fish that had been deodorized by this plant, whether it was grilled or steamed, tasted more delicious after cooking, so the plant was given the name of fish herb.

There are also many records and names of the use of fish herbs in traditional Chinese medicine, such as Jin Buchang, Nine-Story Pagoda, Guangguang Zi and so on.

Basil seeds can be used internally to treat conditions such as colds, stomach bloating, enteritis, diarrhea, bruises, swelling and pain, and rheumatoid arthritis, while topical use can also treat eczema, dermatitis, and even snake bites.

In foreign countries, basil is often used as a spice in Western cuisine, and basil is also one of the most common seasonings in Southeast Asian cuisine.

Yang Huairen also understood why there were basil leaves in the kitchen of the Wuman King, and the area where their tribe lived may be in the undeveloped mountains and mountains in the northern part of the Indochina Peninsula, where basil is abundant, and it is very normal to like to eat basil.

Yang Huairen washed a lot of narrow bowfish, and unconsciously felt that the bowfish was actually somewhat similar to the swordfish, both of which were narrow and long, with delicate meat and no scales and few bones, but the meat quality was better.

Cut the washed bowfish into fish segments, add salt, green onions, ginger, garlic, and fish herbs to marinate for a while, put a little oil in the pot, cook the green onion and ginger segments first, and then add water to boil.

After the water is boiled, you can add the sauce, not much, almost four to one-fifth of the water, in fact, according to the different personal tastes, the sauce used to make the sauce and roast fish, with the sauce of local specialties can also be used, as long as it is in line with your own taste.

When the sauce and water are mixed evenly, you can add the marinated fish segments, turn them slightly to ensure that the fish are immersed in the thick sauce and heated evenly.

Change to medium heat and stew slowly, wait for the fish section to mature, exude a delicious fish fragrance, you can get out of the pot, the cooking method is actually not difficult, the fish section is tender inside and out at this time, and it is full to absorb the various aromas in the sauce, the marinated fish section and the sauce itself have enough salt, so there is no need to add additional salt.

Many people like to eat fish sour or sweet, add a little vinegar or sugar before cooking, bow fish is a very fatty ingredient in itself, with sweet and sour or spicy, will not affect its deliciousness.

Yang Huairen tasted a piece first, and sighed that the deliciousness of the bowfish really deserves its name, and the melt-in-your-mouth taste makes people feel refreshed, but such a delicious fish is facing extinction in later generations, which is really embarrassing.