Recipe | Fish Lumpia with Afritada Sauce

I don't get to cook that much (new recipes, that is) since I started watching my food intake, but while browsing some magazines to look for healthy and veggie packed recipes, I come across this and hoped to cook it.

It's not really vegetable-packed recipe, but it was easy and it was a new way of cooking cream dory fish... one of the family's favorite foods. This recipe was taken from the vol.1 no.4 issue of Foodie Magazine, and is a recipe by chef Sunshine Puey-Pengson, wife of the celebrity chef Rob Pengson.


Fish Lumpia with Afritada Sauce
Serves 8

Ingredients - Fish Lumpia

• 1/2 kilogram dory fillets (or any fish fillets), cut vertically into 1/2-inch strips
  
• 1 piece large white onion, sliced
  
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
  
• salt and pepper (to taste)
  
• a stack of round Lumpia wrappers
  
• vegetable oil (for frying)

How to Cook - Fish Lumpia

• In a pre-heated pan with olive oil, saute onion over low heat until caramelized. Set aside.
  
• Season fillet strips with salt and pepper. Place a strip on one lumpia wrapper and top with a teaspoon of caramelized onions. Fold ends and roll tightly. Do the same with the rest of the fillet strips.

Ingredients - Afritada Sauce

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
  
• 1 clove garlic, chopped
  
• 1 small carrot, diced
  
• 1 small potato, diced
  
• 1/2 cup water
  
• 1 cup tomato sauce
  
• 1/4 cup raisins
  
• 1 small red pepper, diced
  
• 1 teaspoon sugar
  
• salt and pepper (to taste)

How to Cook - Afritada Sauce

• In a preheated pan with oil, saute garlic, carrots and potatoes over medium heat for 5 minutes.
  
• Add water, tomato sauce, and raisins. Simmer for about 10 minutes.
  
• Add bell pepper and sugar. Season with salt and pepper and serve with the lumpia.

To maximize time, I cooked the sauce while frying the fish. Trying this dish, I was a bit half-hearted about it because I wasn't sure what it would taste like - especially the lumpia. I do like the taste of raw onions, but I personally don't eat much cooked onion, unless it's Onion Rings. :) Anyway, the dish tasted good - the slightly sweet/tangy sauce provided much flavor to the slightly tasteless fish and the caramelized onions provided the dish with sweetness. The lumpia and the sauce went well together, but even without the sauce, the lumpia still tasted good for me.

Another way to cook the dory fish...a much better option to the typical pork lumpiang shanghai. Nice!