Steam fish with Shitake Mushroom (花菇), Daylily (金针) and Red Dates (红枣)

This is the same as steam fish with shitake mushroom, with daylily and red dates added.

This is good for premium fish like grouper, threadfin, pomfret (or commonly misspelled as promfet), where the meat is very tasty.

Ingredients

1. Fish ( 1 slice of mid cut 2 cm thick, or 1 fish about 300-500gms)
2. Salt
3. 5-10 dried shitake mushroom (花菇)
4. 4 teaspoon sesame oil.
5. 4 teaspoon soy sauce.
6. 1 teaspoon sugar
7. Stalk of Chinese parsley
8. 10-20 dried daylily (金针)
9. 5 red dates (红枣) 

Method

1. Soak the dried mushroom overnight or at least for 2 hours.
2. For each daylily, tie a knot in the middle. This prevents the daylily from opening and slitting up after cooking, and it also give it bit chewy to the bite. Wash and set aside.
3. Soak the red dates for 15 mins.  Remove the seed, and slices them into thin slices.
4. Cut and discard the mushroom stalk, slice the mushroom into ½ cm thick strips.  Squeeze out the water. 
5. Put the mushroom, and daylily in a bowl and add in sugar, soya sauce, and sesame oil, leave it to season for 30 mins. (this is an important step so that the mushroom taste good after steaming)
6. If processing whole fish (eg pomfret, or small grouper), de-scale the fish, and remove the gut and gills.  Lightly brush the gut wall with a brush to remove the blood clots.  If processing fillet, just rinse with water.  Drain dry.
7. Rub some salt on the fish surface, (and the gut wall if whole fish is used). 
8. Put fish on a steaming plate, and lay the mushroom and lily bud and sliced red dates on top of the fish, and some into the gut.
9. Make sure that the steamer is already on high heat and full steam.   Steam the fish for 10 mins under high heat.  15 mins if the fish is big (1kg)
10. Wash and chop the parsley into strips, lay them on the cooked fish while hot. 
11. Serve hot.