Tomato Ginger Steamed Fish

Making the most of Summer garden abundance

At the start of 2024 I told myself, “this is going to be the year you’re going to become a person who really gardens.” I was determined to be organized and actually reference growing zone schedules rather than impulsively buy plants and throw seeds in the ground when I’m feeling restless (I affectionally refer to this as rage gardening). For some reason I thought 6 tomato plants (2 each of 3 varieties) wasn’t going to be too many tomatoes for 2 adults so I started about a dozen tomato seeds (just in case) and most all of them are still kicking and as you might be able to tell from the photos and the obnoxious amount of tomato haul photos, we most definitely have too many tomatoes. Not the worst problem to have!

Does anyone else love the smell of tomato leaves?? The smell is so lovely, having the scent on my hands after picking tomatoes is almost as good as snacking on them.

We’ve made a lot of tomato confit, fresh pasta sauce, tomato salads, and straight up eating handfuls of tomatoes in order to keep up with the abundance. Tomatoes have overtaken my entire personality, which lead to me working on many tomato centric dishes (does a tomato jam milk bread donut sound insane?) and this beautifully simple recipe for Tomato Ginger Steamed Fish. It’s a perfect cozy summer meal if there ever was one. Inspired by classic Cantonese steamed fish, it tastes super light and fresh, relying ingredients being in their best form. The addition of tomatoes provides this wonderful tartness and sweetness. Rather than creating a tomato sauce, when you steam the fish over top you create this delicate and incredibly flavorful seafood tomato broth that is just so delicious spooned over steamed rice. This recipe also takes less than 20 minutes to make, 15 if you’re being quick, which during the summer is about all the time I want to spend making dinner.

When picking fish for this dish, I think a buttery white fish like sablefish (also called black cod or butter fish) tastes best, but I’ve also tried this with tilapia and it was still great! I’m sure it would taste amazing with salmon or trout too.

I’m also pretty proud to say that I grew most of the produce going into this recipe with the exception of the ginger. I was eyeing up some ginger plants at the nursery the other day, but I think I might try planting some grocery store ginger and see how that goes!

A Quick Spin Around the Garden

For the full fish recipe, just keep scrolling down! Or stick around for a little garden tour while I share some things I’ve learned and what I would like to do next season! Always appreciative of any gardening wisdom if you want to share.

I’ll start off by stating that I am not a gardening expert, but I do love how gardening makes me feel. It is such a satisfying practice to being able to grow your own food. Every morning I go out to check out the plants and simply just staring at them helps any stress I have melt away. The best part if that you get to taste vegetables at their peak deliciousness. I never knew gai lan could be so sweet and tender until I was able to cut a few stalks from my yard for dinner.