Blog

When I order fish and seafood from @faharseafood I usually ask for the grouper to be filleted, and the fillets will be delivered along with the head and bones. After a few rounds of orders, I accumulated quite a few sets of these, and I felt that it would’ve been such a waste to just throw them away. So I decided to do what I usually do when given a bunch of bones from any animal: make stock.

This recipe based by the one from Hank Shaw interestingly uses typically East Asian ingredients like konbu and dried mushrooms, to infuse a huge load of umami into the stock. I subbed the white wine with rice vinegar diluted with white grape juice, and I feel that this makes the stock less fishy yet packed with flavor.

Will be making quite a few dishes to use up the stock in the next few weeks.

Wanted to make Swedish Meatballs, which called for vegetable stock for making that awesome brown sauce. One could probably buy a box from upmarket grocers like Village Grocer or B.I.G., but it costs close to 10 ringgit for a half-litre box of basically veggie scraps simmered in water. Looking through the ingredients list and seeing stuff like sugar, glucose, and a bunch of chemicals I can’t even recall, I figured I’d make it myself using stuff pulled from my fridge.