For New Year's Day I worked on making "osechi ryori" for my husband's family. This dish, gomame, are dried sardines that are cooked in a sweet soy sauce. The sardines are dry roasted in a pan then set aside. The sauce is made of soy sauce, sugar and mirin in the pan and then the sardines are added back. The results are crispy sardines with sweet covering to them.
The top photo shows fresh tuna being cut into smaller pieces and the bottom two photos show the frozen tuna auction, which is open to the general public.
This is actually closed to the general public, but wanted to share these photos of the fresh tuna auction at Tsukiji Market. You can see the tails are cut off. Buyers will access the quality of the fish by looking at the tail, amount of fat, color of meat, etc.
Shinji-san makes a great "zuke donburi" for breakfast when we have leftover sashimi. This one is made from buri (yellowtail) marinated in soy sauce and mirin overnight. We topped it with tamagoyaki (egg omelet) from Shoryo in Tsukiji.
Buri (yellowtail) is a fatty fish and when grilled with the teriyaki sauce it comes out tender and falling apart.
This recipe is a breeze. Take two fresh buri (yellowtail) steaks. In a tupperware, combine 1 part soy sauce to 1 part mirin. Add buri and let marinate overnight. Grill and voila!
A healthy breakfast of simmered fish, salad, miso soup and rice cooked with grains.
Some of my favorite ways to eat fish is himono. These are fish that are fileted open, salted and then cured and dried overnight. Excess water leaves the fish and it becomes rich in umami as a result. Then we grill it in the oven.
Oily, meaty fish marinated in ginger and soy sauce, tossed in katakuriko and deep-fried for a cool version of nuggets. The bottom photo are a simple oden of fish cakes, konnyaku, hanpen, chikuwa, konbu and deep-fried tofu.
Sanma (Pacific Saury) is stuffed with mentaiko and then grilled. The oily meat of the fish is accented by the spicy mentaiko eggs. Great with a glass of sake.
In this fantastic presentation, called "funamori" the fish is fileted, sliced, and then returned to its owner in this awesome design. This is a very classic presentation that allows you to see the freshness of the fish (by checking the eyes and the gills). This is garnished with grated ginger and soy sauce.
In the Fukuoka station building there was a small seafood market with a beautiful display of himono, or fish that was cut open, salted and air-dried. This colorful display included tachiuo (cutlassfish), tai (seabream) and more.
My husband came home one day from Tsukiji Market with sanma which is in season at the moment.
