A grilled fish lunch.
Sanma (mackerel pike) is one of my preferred Japanese fish. Ideal for Summer.
Too long for my oven-toaster, I cut them. I simply empty, rinse, sprinkle natural salt and grill shio-yaki.
Summer kabocha pumpkin. I cut slices, steamed them till 3/4 cooked and grilled with the fish. Rice and white cucumber (salted, let 15 minutes, rinsed) are the other savory sides.
Dessert : Mango ice cream (frozen mango + coconut cream in the blender, frozen again).
Jardinière de légumes.
A jardinière is a woman gardener. She gave her name for all mix of season veggies from the garden. Today, they are simply steamed together.
Sanma fish, Pacific saury. I bought it salted. So I grilled it 5 minutes in the oven-toaster. I have not added anything to the vegetables because salty fish is very strong, salty, fat, fishy. Eating them together with a little squizzed lemon gives a nice balance.
Sakezushi, sake sushi. Sushi made without vinegar, only Japanese sake rice wine. It gets sour naturally.
That’s not my invention. It’s specialty in Kagoshima, on Kyushu island. The legend says that on a party night a merry lord poured his sake over food just before falling asleep. When he woke up, he ate the food and found the taste delicious.
It’s a nice story, very unlikely. As you may know, sushi was at the origine a technique to preserve fish, cooked fish. The rice was not eaten. Vinegar or sake were added for preserving properties. So sake sushi has been very common, hundreds of years ago.
My own variation.
The rice : genmai (brown) and mochigome (sticky),cooked al dente with kombu. The piece of kombu cut in ribbon. Freshly roast black sesame. A little salt. 1/3 of the sake.
The center : A shiitake mushroom simmered in sansho tsukudani.
The top : shioyaki sanma (grilled fish)
Everybody in Kansai owns a special wooden box for that. I do… it’s somewhere. But where ? I used a pound cake case. Not the best idea with brown rice.
Half of the rice mix
The mushroom bits in a line in the center.
The rest of the rice.
The grilled (or salted) fish.
The 2/3 of sake poured on the fish.
After a few minutes wrap. After 2 hours at room temperature, add kinome leaves on the fish. Re-wrap. Put a tissue paper on top. Press.
Let 2 hours to 2 days in the fridge.
If you press enough, and if your rice is well cooked (vs al dente here), you get a bar of oshizushi (pressed sushi) that you can cut.
Serve with grated pink ginger.
Not your usual sushi. The flavor is difficult to describe. Sweet, fermented, fragrant, fish, woody… a rare harmony. You have to try it.
Another Japanese classic.
A sanma.
A fresh sanma, cleaned and cut…
…coated in katakuriko (potato starch), pan-fried in very little oil.
Grate young ginger.
Make a spicy sauce directly in the jar : miso, pasted garlic, pasted ginger, chili flakes. Cook in microwave. Add roast sesame oil.
Wash the dish… Yeah, the dish with starch, wash it with rice vinegar, pour in the pan, heat… and when it’s transparent, add 1/2 ts of spicy sauce. Pass the fish in it.
Put it in a Japanese dish, with an umeboshi pickled plum. Serve rice too.
Oh, that was good… I’d even eat one more.
Summer is peak season for sudachi lemon and start of the season for this long fish called sanma.
They are often associated, very simply. Shio-yaki is salted and roast.
This is yuba. Those sheets are the skin that appear when you boil tonyu (soy milk). They are sold raw or dry. They can be used to wrap different ingredients.
These are the raw “sashimi” ones, a specialty of Kyoto, delicious just like that. With kinome leaves.
Pour a little nama shoyu and add a little wasabi :
Cal 644.9 F34.7g C40.8g P36.9g
Yes, sanma is fat, but it’s full of the healthiest fats that fight all illnesses and smooth your skin with more class than botox. And it’s easy to eat even on a hot day.
GOURMANDE in OSAKA 