Sweet and Sour Fish Fillet (Ikan Asam Manis)

This is a typical menu in many Chinese restaurant in Indonesia. I used to have it whenever I dined in there back then. I still had one whole Tilapia in freezer. Last Tuesday early in the morning, I took it out of the freezer, thawed it and started the smelly job-filleting the fish in the afternoon. In the middle of cooking I found out that the tomato paste which I'd kept in fridge was rotten. Thus I chucked it into the garbage and replace it with lime juice and plum sauce. It was a bright idea, the food turned out to be delicious...even my little Bianca surprised me by asking to have some more rice with it.


Ingredients:
To make the fish fillet:
- 1 whole Tilapia, use the fillet, cut into small chunks
- salt
- ground black pepper
- lime juice
- tapioka flour
- oil for frying

In a bowl, put the fish fillet and drizzle some lime juice. Add salt and pepper and mix it well. Cover all the surface of the fish with tapioka flour and then deep fry it in hot oil under medium high heat until golden brown. Place it in a serving bowl.

To make the sauce:
- 2 carrot, peel off the skin and cut into matches shapes
- 1 green bell pepper, discard the seed and cut into thin long shapes
- 6 cloves of garlic, chop thinly
- 4 cloves of small red onion, chop thinly (supposed to be onion, but I did not have it)
- 4cm of ginger, crack it pestle
- 1 tomato, cut into 12 pieces
- 2Tbsp of plum sauce
- 1Tbsp of lime juice
- 1Tbsp of oyster sauce
- 1Tbsp of fish sauce
- salt
- sugar
- ground white pepper
- water
- 1Tbsp of tapioka flour, mix it with a little bit of water
- oil for saute

In a pan, saute garlic, onion and ginger until fragrant. Add tomato and continue to saute for another 2minutes. Add cut carrots and bell pepper, stir it well and continue to cook for 5minutes. Add plum sauce, lime juice, oyster, fish sauce and water and mix it well. Continue to cook until boiling. Add salt, sugar and pepper to taste. At last pour the tapioka mixture and stir it immediately until thicken.
To serve, pour the sauce on top of the fried fish fillet. Eat it with warm steam rice.