As for this episode, what we will be cooking is a simple yet delicious dish. And it is called as "Ginataang Tilapia". These are the ingredients that we will be using for this dish. Tilapia (Fried). This is the baby spinach. We also need ginger which we have sliced into strips. Onion and Garlic. For a hint of spiciness, I will also be using Thai Chili. Aside from these ingredients, we will also be needing long green pepper, "gata" (coconut milk), which is important in a "ginataan", fish sauce and as well as ground black pepper. Here is the complete list of the ingredients together with their respective quantities. If you are ready, let us now start cooking. We will be heating a cooking oil here in our cooking pot. When we are heating a cooking oil, we can set the heat on high for faster heating. After that we can now add the garlic. I put the garlic first when I am cooking a "ginataang tilapia" because I want the taste of a toasted garlic just like a roasted garlic which we can get when we turn the garlic's color into brown. We will now add our onion or "sibuyas". This is a white onion that I have chopped but you can also use yellow or red onion in here. We will just cooked this for about 20 seconds. Then, I will now put the ginger. When it comes to the ginger, what I do is I sliced it thinly then chopped it into strips. We will just continue to saute it until the onion completely softens. That is just how simple it is. After this, we can now pour in the "gata" (coconut milk). What I am using here is 2 cups of "gata" or coconut milk as what it is stated on the complete list shown earlier. You can also view the complete list of the ingredients in the description of this video, and as well as in our food blog which you can visit anytime, panlasangpinoy.com. What I am using here is the coconut milk in can. It is better to use a fresh coconut milk but when there is none available, the coconut milk in can may do. We will just cover our cooking pot for the coconut milk to boil faster. Once it has boiled up, we will mixed it for a while. Usually, when I am cooking "ginataang tilapia", I am cooking the coconut milk for about 5 minutes before I put the fish. And that is what we will be doing now. We will just cover our cooking pot and continue to cook and boil the coconut milk for 5 minutes more. I will add the chili pepper in here for its spicyness to mix with the coconut milk. If you want to add more chili pepper for more spicyness, you may do so. We will now place here the fried "tilapia". Before we continue with the cooking, I will show you first how I prepare the "tilapia". Most of you are familiar on how to cook a fish. But for those who are new to cooking, I will show you how it is done. I am making a cut on its sides and as you can notice, there are 3 cuts in each side of the fish. I am doing this so that the seasoning will immediately stick into the "tilapia". Because What's next is we will season the fish with salt. In short, this is the time when we will add salt into the fish. We will just rub the salt in between the cuts we have made into the fish so that the taste of the salt would easily be absorbed by the fish. We will also be doing that in the cavity. But technically, what we are doing is just we are spreading salt into the fish. After adding salt into the fish, I'll just let it sit for 10 minutes for the fish to absorb the salt. Then would could fry it after. When it comes to frying, I use cooking oil generously as for the fish to be cooked perfectly. Just make sure that the cooking oil is hot already before we place the fish so that it won't stick into the cooking pot. We will just fry it until one side of the fish turns into golden brown. Just use a medium heat for the fish to not get easily burnt. Then we could now turn it upside down. It is just the same thing that we will be doing once we have flipped the fish over. As you can notice, the oil is bubbling up after we flipped the fish, it's because of the liquid of the fish is mixing into the hot cooking oil. We could just ignore that. It is much better if you have a splatter screen that you can place above the pot so that the oil wont splatter on you. We will just continue to fry it until the other side turns into golden brown. We can now place the fish into the boiling coconut milk. Then we will just be cooking it for about 12 minutes more. We will just cover our cooking pot. While we are cooking our fish here in the coconut milk, its taste is gradually mixing up which helps to make our "ginatang tilapia" more delicious. One more thing is that, the frying of the fish serves as a great help to maintain its texture while we are boiling the it into the coconut milk for it not to get crushed. Usually, when we boil a fish, its meat is being separated from its bones most likely when we have not fried it especially when we are using high heat. This is now ready. What I am doing is just I am spreading the sauce into the upper portion of the "tilapia" for it to be covered with sauce. It is not necessary to flip the fish upside down. But if you want to turn the "tilapia" upside down, by all means, you can do so.
It would depend on your preference and that would be okay. We will now add in here the long green pepper. There you go, the "siling pang-sigang" (long green pepper). After that, we will just season it with fish sauce and we will also add ground black pepper. We are almost finish. We will just be mixing it. We still have an ingredient that we have not added yet. And that is the vegetable which is the spinach. What I will be doing is that I will now add the spinach after we have mixed this. This is what we called baby spinach. You can also add malungay leaves in here or "dahon ng sili" (chilli pepper leaves). I will just cover it and continue cooking it for about 3 to 5 minutes. What happpens in here is that, the leaves that we have just added has been steamed that is why we still need to mix it. It is like we are placing the spinach or whatever vegetables you were using into the sauce. This is now ready. We will just transfer it into a serving plate. After that, we can now serve it. This is now our "Ginataang Tilapia". We will now taste our "ginataang tilapia" and we also have here a plain hot rice. A "ginataan" is really delicious whether it is fish or any kind of meat when it is paired with rice. We will now start eating this. I will just get a small fish. How glutton of me to get a whole fish. We will also be getting some veggies. This would be delicious if it has a spinach or malunggay leaves and even chili pepper leaves. This would really be awesome. What I like to do is to put the "ginataan" over the rice. It seems like we are making a soup out of the coconut milk. There you go. I won't be using any utensils since I would be using my bare hands. Come and eat with me. This is the fried "tilapia". The rice is still hot. Mmm~ Delicious. Wow. It is just still hot but that is due to me being hungry that I really can't wait to let it cool down. Mmm~ The taste of the fish is really awesome. When we are frying a fish before we mix it with a coconut milk, it has a unique taste that makes it flavorful. That is why I like it and enjoyed it very much. My skills on eating with bare hands has become low that is why I need to practice it more. If you would agree to it, all things would become more easy if you practice it. It does not mean that if you are good at it in the past, your skill level would be the same after a long time. That is why, we still need to practice it. Eating with bare hands is a skill which I want to harness again so that next time, it would be easier for me to do it. It wouldn't make me look like a beginner. As you would know, this "ginataang tilapia" is really awesome and I hope that you would try this recipe. If you have liked this video, don't forget to like it. For those who are new to Panlasang Pinoy, come and let us enjoy this food and don't forget to subscribe. You can find the subscribe button below this video. If you have any questions, suggestions, feedbacks and recommendations, just comment it below. As you would know, I've been getting a lot of good feedbacks that could be very helpful in our channel for me to help you more efficiently. If you have any ideas, you can direct it to me and we will try to make it. Thank you for watching this video. Hope to see you soon in our next videos. I will just be finishing this dish. Hope to see you soon.
