The Sancocho Series: Sancocho de Pescado (Colombia)

One of us has an aunt who only eats fish as her choice of meat. As you can imagine, it can be somewhat irksome sometimes when preparing a meal with her around. But nevertheless she is a nice person, and we invited her over for dinner one night. As usual, we were feeling somewhat lazy and wanted a simple one-dish meal that could be served alongside rice. Cooking rice is always easy in asia. You just need to dump everything into a rice cooker. No stirring. No mess. No pain.

After some thought, we decided to settle on a fish Sancocho. We have eaten Sancocho before (a colombian-american friend cooked it for us), and love how it complements so well with rice. Fish Sancocho can be found in quite a few countries. Some examples are Colombia, Venezuela and the Canary Islands of Spain. As we are most familiar with the colombian version of Sancocho, we decided on settling with a simplified colombian recipe. Where almost all ingredients can be easily bought at any decent supermarket in Singapore.

Sancocho de Pescado

Ingredients:
-1 tablespoon vegetable oil
-1 large onion, finely chopped
-5 cloves garlic, finely chopped
-1 kg frozen (or fresh) white-fleshed fish fillets (such as red snapper, halibut or cod), thawed and cut into large chunks
-10 fish or ikan bilis stock cubes (Knorr is the preferred brand), dissolved in 10 cups of hot water
-1 kg potatoes, deskinned and cut into quarters
-1 teaspoon turmeric powder and 1 teaspoon cumin powder, mixed with 1 tablespoon water
-1/2 cup coriander, finely chopped
-2 cans canned corn, drained
-4 limes, cut into quarters
-3 to 4 ripe avocados (optional but highly recommended), diced

In a large pot, fry the onion and garlic with the vegetable oil over medium to low heat until onions soften and garlic turns brown. Add in the fish stock and turmeric-cumin paste. Clamp a lid onto the pot and bring the mixture to a boil over high heat. Make sure you give the liquid a good stir. Add the fish fillets into the pot and bring to a boil again. Clamp back the lid and reduce the heat to medium-low. Allow the mixture to simmer for 20 minutes. Add the potatoes and bring to the boil again. Simmer again for another 30 minutes. This time with the lid off. Turn off the heat and give the mixture a taste. It should be salty enough so we do not recommend any additional salt. Stir in the corn and coriander and allow mixture to sit (rest) for about 2 to 3 hours (make sure the lid is off). Just before dinnertime, reheat the mixture and serve with rice, lime and avocado.