Fried Shark (Ikan Yu) with Tamarind Recipe

Shark meat has nice texture and is very tasty although sometimes it tends to have a little fishy smell. The meat is almost the same as that of a stingray. Therefore to avoid this, a shark meat dish should be eaten while still hot. Sharks have very tiny scales and they are aligned in such manner that allows them to have aerodynamics features which make them able to swim at high speed. It is not easy to remove this tiny sand like scales using the normal scraping method. The trick is to use boiling hot water to pour it on the fish and the scales would come out easily when you scrape it with a knife. Another easier way is to just remove the leather like skin all together. I bought these whole sharks from the wet market, already cleaned and with all the skins removed. They only have one long cartilage back bone in the middle and there are no other small bones at all. Therefore, it is very easy to eat this small whole shark. Sometimes I would fry them with Chinese salted vegetables (kiam chye) but this time around I just marinated the sharks with tamarind and deep fried them in hot oil. When I was a kid, my mom used to cook shark this way for me and shark meat used to be one of my favourite. Luckily I didn’t grow and become a loan shark (Ah Long), ha ha ha! To all the shark fins critics and environmentalists out there, we do eat the shark meat and nothing goes to waste!

Ingredients
Sharks, (ikan yu, whole fish or cuts), 7pcs
Tamarind, 1 tablespoon Dark Soya sauce, ½ teaspoon
Salt to taste
Sugar to taste

Marinade the shark meat with tamarind, dark soya sauce, salt and sugar. Heat up wok and put in some vegetable oil. Deep fry the shark until it turn slightly dark in colour. Serve while still hot.