Steamed Sea Bass, Japanese Style

Here's a method for steaming fish that Chef Tadashi Ono explained to me the other day at Matsuri. I had brought a beautiful, freshly caught whole sea bass to the restaurant from the Union Square farmers market, and Chef Ono graciously showed me how to clean and portion it the Japanese way. (I'm going to soon post a video on the subject, which is fascinating.)

Okay, steaming a delicate fish like sea bass: First, set up a steamer on a stovetop (I use a simple steamer inside a sauce pot -- you don't need anything fancy). Now, place a filet on a plate that can fit inside the steamer. Sprinkle sea salt on the fish, pour sake over it, and garnish with either a few slices of ginger or thinly sliced scallions. Position the plate inside the steamer, and start steaming. Check the fish after a few minutes - when it looks ready, remove it from the steamer. Discard the sake steaming liquid and serve the fish. It's that simple.

If you'd like to add another layer of flavor, you can place a piece of konbu underneath the filet before you steam. Also, you can make a fish stock from the sea bass bones, thicken it with a little kuzu starch (or kuzukiri, potato starch) and pour it over the fish (after you discard the sake steaming liquid). This kind of thickened stock is called "kuzu an" -- salt flavored kuzu, if I understand correctly.

To prepare the stock: Combine fish bones and head with water and a piece of konbu in a stock pot and bring to a boil. As soon as the liquid boils, discard the konbu. Reduce the heat and simmer for thirty minutes, skimming any scum that appears on the surface. Remove from heat and strain the liquid.

The fish I prepared this way was really delicious, delicately flavored and sublime. Give it a try and let me know what you think.

(By the way, I made miso soup the following morning with the fish stock, garnished with chopped mitsuba -- heavenly.)

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Mentaiko!

Shin Hatakeyama, a chef who is the manager of Sunrise Mart, the Japanese food market in Manhattan (the one at 494 Broome Street), has made a commitment to importing top-quality, authentic ingredients from Japan. Yesterday he invited Daigo Irifune of Yamaya USA to showcase his company's mentaiko. Daigo was kind enough to talk to me about all things mentaiko:

First of all, what's mentaiko? Sometimes called "spicy cod roe," it's actually spicy pollock eggs. An import from Korea, it became popular in Japan after World War Two. Fukuoka, a big city in the southern island of Kyushu, is the mentaiko capital of Japan. (Kyushu is the closest part of Japan to Korea, so not surprising.). Daigo tells me that there are some three hundred mentaiko producers in the city.

Daigo explained that his mentaiko is produced by marinating pollock eggs in chili, sake, konbu and yuzu citrus, then letting it ferment lightly for several hours. The result is spicy, flavorful roe, tiny in size and red in color. Mentaiko is sold in its natural membrane, pictured above, or in jars, the membrane removed and ready to eat.

How do you use it? The most common way is as a filling for onigiri. But at Sunrise, Daigo offered tastes of mentaiko spaghetti, an extremely popular Japanese-style pasta, crossover dishes marrying Japanese flavors to Italian pasta. (Also called "wafu pasta" -- there are at least two places in New York that specialize in this cooking, Basta Pasta and Pasta Wafu.)

Daigo also told me about another dish, "mentaiko salad," which is composed of mentaiko, wakame seaweed, cucumbers and kuzukiri noodles (translucent arrowroot vermicelli that readily absorb flavors). Sounds tasty. If you try it, please let me know how it comes out!

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Buy a Japanese Knife

While working at Matsuri, I heard of a traveling knife salesman from Japan who regularly visits restaurant kitchens across America. I asked Chef Ono if he could order a knife for me the next time this man showed up at the restaurant. That happened two months ago. The other week my blade arrived.

I've been trying to find a left-handed gyuto, an all-purpose kitchen knife, for a while now with no luck, even in Japan. I was looking for a blade tapered on one side only, in traditional Japanese style, hence the hunt for the lefty blade. (Western kitchen knives are tapered on both sides, of course.) These one sided knives let you make smoother, more precise cuts, which is why sushi blades are honed this way -- so you can effortlessly cut through the soft flesh of fish.

I've been fascinated by Japanese knives for a while now (see my post and story in Salon). Here's what the Japanese food scholar Dr. Naomichi Ishige says about knives in his remarkable book "The History and Culture of Japanese Food" (Totally out of print and unavailable except in libraries, what a shame):

"For Japanese cooks, the hocho, the Japanese kitchen knife, is the equivalent of the samurai's sword. The hocho is so much a symbol of a cook than in Japan a cook is known as a 'knife wielder'... When a cook moves from one restaurant to another he takes his own hocho with him. A chef gauges the skill of a new cook by examining his hocho to see where it was made and how it has been maintained."

(By the way, I met Dr. Ishige once and he told me about his amazing life, including living with nomads in the Libyan desert, and with headhunters in Papua New Guinea. Wow!)

The gentleman pictured above, Mr. Yuichi Hiruko of Filco Corporation, is the knife salesman who helps keeps this sensibility alive. We met when he delivered my blade. His company is based in Sakai, the historic home of Japanese metalcraft. On this trip he had a couple of hundred knives with him, which he was delivering to chefs across the country. He develops personal relationships with chefs and visits new restaurants only through word-of-mouth. And even in today's credit card age, the way he works is decidedly old-school: He takes your order on trust, and you pay when he delivers your blade.

Mr. Hiruko explained to me that he expects his customers to learn how to care and sharpen their blades before he sells them a knife. He works with "knife wielders" to find the blade that fits them perfectly.

My gyuto has a 12-inch steel alloy blade with a traditional handle turned from Japanese magnolia. I needed one big enough to handle large portions of ingredients you typically find in a restaurant kitchen. It's unbelievably sharp and precise, gliding through even raw carrots effortlessly. The other night Chef Ono walked over to watch me cut and told me my technique is getting better. It's not me. It's my knife.

If you're interested in one of Mr. Hiruko's knives, let me know and I'll try to pass the information along. His knives are expensive, as you'd expect, and you'll have to wait a while -- but definitely worth it.

Here's another passage from Dr. Ishige's book:

Click here to read more »

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