John, I'm of no help with the fish, the closest I've come to steaming a fish is poaching salmon. Ming Tsai has a You Tube video, but I only know that because I really like Ming Tsai's Mother, she's such a little boss, LOL, and I love listening to her!

I just wanted to say good luck to Mike, and I'm sorry about the cat. Hopefully both situations will work out well.

Annie

I have sure baked a lot of whole fish....and steamed a few and poached a few.
The fish I poach is salmon. I make a court boullion...onion , celery, parsley lemon....maybe a bay leaf, maybe some peppercorns.....and lower the fish into the barely simmering water. I tie it up in a piece of cloth so it is easy to remove without breaking it up..
I have baked some very large fish while at a rental house somewhere when someone got lucky with a rod and reel. Blue fish, striped bass, and bass and pike. Pretty much I just put some butter, salt amd pepper and lemon inside the fish....no butter on the blue fish it's fatty enough....but ginger is nice with blue fish.
Cook it at 350 until it just flakes......the flesh is just opaque. Don't over cook.....you can cook more but you can't "Un cook".
I like a minimum of strong flavors with a delicate fish, but more assertive with a stronger flavored fish like blue or salmon.

So nice to 'see' you, John Liu! I can't help on the steamed fish either... just wanted to say it's super cute that you're trying to set up your friends. I didn't think that guys did that kind of thing! :)

P.S. Sorry - tried to edit my post, but either Houzz or Comcast are acting up: just posted and my comments didn't take. Apologies if this ends up appearing as a dup.

ETA: In my directions above, add ginger slivers (not garlic slivers) right before cooking. Also, it's very likely your grandma cooked a white-fleshed, flaky, lean variety of fish (sea bass, red snapper, flounder/sole). I grew up in the L.A. area in the 60s/70s, and I don't recall salmon was a common, popular fish among the Chinese families/households I knew.

Thank you, javiwa! I will do a test run before Thanksgiving. No, we never had salmon growing up - I don't think it is a fish traditionally available in China? I think sea bass was the most common fish that grandma steamed. Grandpa built some big (12 foot diameter, 15 foot deep concrete tanks in the yard, to raise sea bass, but turns out the fish just ate each other.

No, guys don't usually try to set each other up. In fact, we typically don't talk about each other's personal life at all. I'd be more likely to hear that a friend has a new car or his cat is ill or he's trying a new kind of tire on his bicycle, than to learn that his fiance dumped him or suchlike. However, SWMBO has lots of single girlfriends in the 50-60 y/o range and likes to introduce people to each other. Mike is my bicycle riding and Porsche owning buddy, and has the misfortune to be tall, fit, handsome, single, courteous, and in the middle of that age range. And of course whatever SWMBO does, I end up getting dragged into.

Welcome back John!

Steamed fish:

1. Fish must be 100% fresh. Go to an Asian store and pick out a live one from the tank.

2. The key is the quality of soy sauce. There are twenty/thirty kinds of soy sauces, including one that says "Steam Fish Soy Sauce".

3. Garlic, Ginger, scallions as post above. I always put sliced shiitake mushrooms on the fish to flavor the fish.

4. Just before presenting steamed fish to the table, pour smoking bacon fat on the fish and serve.

5. No lemon. Never lemon. Garnish with Chinese parsley.

dcarch

Thank you dcarch! We have those live fish stores here so that's what I'll do.

My grandma was a good cook. I don't think I appreciated that enough when I was little. Her steamed fish, steamed buns and sea cucumber were always a hit.

Hey, that's something I haven't had since I was little. Who knows how to make sea cucumber? I guess it's a kind of sea slug?