Aside from fish prep, here's what you will likely need to do:

• Peel the ginger (0.50 oz) if you prefer
• Wash the green onions (3 piece) and cilantro (3 piece) before using them.
• Rehydrate orange peel in warm water for 5 minutes

Generally speaking, when you buy fish from the market, most of the gutting and de-scaling has already been done for you (or someone can do it for you before you check out.)

My dad still prefers to do some additional prep work on the fish (1 lb):

• Cut away the belly fat - this helps reduce the fishy taste
• Scrape away the dried blood from the bones - if you're in the US, your fish has most likely already been frozen when you buy it. This leads to some blood drying in the fish cavity, which my dad and most restaurants like to scrape off so that the fish is less "fishy" and more white when it's done cooking
• Rinse the cavity of the fish with water, pat it dry
• Cut into the back - this helps the fish cook more evenly by increasing the surface area that the steam can reach, especially if it's a thick piece of fish.

If you do need to remove the fish scales on your own, my dad showed us 3 methods:

• Using a fish scale remover tool
• Scraping it with a chef knife (my dad's preferred method)
• Placing the fish in a plastic bag, and scraping it with your fingernails (the least messy method)

Traditionally, aside from the fish, the core ingredients are ginger and green onion.

For the ginger, we'll be cutting them into slices, strips, and then mincing them into small bits.

For the green onions, we'll be chopping the whites (for the sauce), and we'll be cutting the green sections into strips (see video) for the garnish.

We'll also be mincing small amounts of our rehydrated mandarin orange peel and dried chili pepper.

We'll be using cilantro but we don't need to do anything to it.

To a bowl, we'll add our minced ginger and chopped green onion shoots (not the stems), and:

• ground bean sauce (1 tbsp)
• light soy sauce (0.50 tbsp)
• a dash of white pepper
• salt (0.50 tsp)
• chicken bouillon (0.25 tsp) (optional)
• sugar (0.50 tsp)
• cornstarch (0.50 tsp)
• olive oil (0.50 tbsp)

We'll mix it for 20-30 seconds.

We'll need a few items to steam:

• A wok or something to steam in
• A plate that fits the fish we're making (usually my dad and most Chinese restaurants use large elliptical plates)
• A steamer rack to elevate the plate. You can also cut part of a can so it becomes a ring, or roll up several sheets of aluminum foil into a thick ring.

Before we start steaming, we'll need to:

• Take a spoon and lather half of the sauce inside the fish cavity, and the rest of it on top of the fish.
• Bring enough water to a boil in the wok so that the water will just barely touch the bottom of the plate when it rests on top of the steamer rack.

The water needs to be boiling before we start steaming.

Note: many other recipes involve sticking ginger and other things in the fish cavity before steaming. This is effectively the same thing but with more flavor.

Once the water is boiling, carefully transfer the plate of fish on top of the steamer rack, and cover the wok.

You may need to do some trial and error, but on my dad's setup at home, he's steaming this tilapia (1 lb) for ​about 12 minutes + 1 minute for extra sanitation.

Some notes on timing and cues:

• You'll know when it's done when the eyes turn white (they're black at first)
• You can stick a chopstick into the thickest part of fish to know if it's done. It should be fairly tender as you poke through.
• The meat should separate easily from the bones.

My dad said there's no magic formula for timing based on weight (watch the video - he laughed at me when I asked), but 12 minutes is a good starting point. You can adjust up and down by 60 seconds depending on the size and type of fish.

If it's overcooked, the meat will be too tough. The skin may also break.

If it's undercooked, then there will be blood / red juices in the meat (which my dad said some people prefer, actually.) In this case, you can still steam it again for another 1-3 minutes, or cover it and zap it in the microwave.

For heat transfer, the main variable is how much water you're steaming with and how big your steaming vessel is.

• Usually, at a typical boiling point, water doesn't heat past 100 C / 212 F, regardless of how intense your stove is.
• This is one of the differences of steaming at a restaurant vs at home - the more water and bigger the vessel, the better.

We'll start heating corn oil (2 tbsp) in a pan until it's shimmering (ripples should start forming across the surface).

Carefully remove the plate from the wok, and add the green onion strips along the top of the fish.

Once the oil is hot enough, pour it onto the fish. You should hear a nice sizzle.

Then add the cilantro (3 piece), and some sesame oil to taste.

Removing the bones from a fish is one of my dad's skills that I've always wanted to document. He always does it so gracefully, and especially for big feasts, you can always make out a subtle, proud grin on his face as he removes the bones and serves his guests.

This is more clear and narrated in the video, and it varies slightly from fish to fish. But in essence, you'll:

• Cut along the middle of the fish to expose the spine
• Break the spine away from the head and tail, and set it aside. (Chinese OGs like my dad usually eat the meat off of the spine.)
• Remove bones along the sides of the fish.
• If you're following tradition, leave the head and tail on the plate. If you have squeamish guests, you can cover the head with garnish.

There will still be some stray bones, so just remind yourself and your guests to eat carefully. (My mom accidentally swallowed a fish bone as a kid, and had to slowly drink vinegar for hours to dissolve it.)