Nanban Recipes: Sweet Miso Mackerel and Vegetables
Nanban cookbook: Tim Anderson's new restaurant is opening soon in Brixton. Skip the crowds and try his Mackerel Kake-ae with Vegetables.
Mackerel Kake-ae (Vinegar-cured Mackerel with Vegetables and Sweet Miso)
This light and healthy recipe comes from Saga prefecture, to the southwest of Fukuoka. It is one of the smallest prefectures in Japan and very rural, and frequently made fun of for being boring and backwards, even by Saga natives. So although I dated a girl who lived there for three months, I didn't spend a great deal of time in Saga, and I didn't get to know the food very well. Plus, she broke my heart, so I tend to associate Saga and its food with bad memories. But at some point, I realised that I had no Saga dishes on my menu, and that seemed unfair. This simple cured fish salad filled not only a geographical gap but also a culinary one; I didn't have many dishes in my repertoire that could be described as 'light'. I often describe this dish as ceviche, Kyushu-style.
makes 4-6 servings
400-500g mackerel fillets (about 1 fillet per serving)
200ml rice vinegar
1/2 tsp salt
10g sugar
2tsp mirin
1/2 tsp soy sauce
For the sweet miso sauce:
15g toasted sesame seeds
40ml curing liquid (see method)
50ml mirin
1 tsp sesame oil
65 white or awase miso
For the vegetables:
1/2 daikon (mooli), peeled
100g carrot, peeled
salt
60g cucumber
To serve:
10g chives, finely chopped
sesame seeds, to garnish
Remove pin bones and the tough outer skin from the mackerel; these are fiddly but necessary jobs. To remove the skin, place the fillet skin-side down on your cutting board, and cut through the flesh near the tail end, but don't slice through the skin. Then you can grab the skin and peel it away in one sheet. It takes some practice, but don't worry if you mangle the first few fillets - you can still use them. Cut the prepared mackerel into bite-sized chunks, about 1cm thick, and put into a bowl. Mix all the remaining ingredients together, ensuring that the salt and sugar have dissolved, and pour over the mackerel pieces. Refrigerate for 4 hours, tossing the fish halfway through to redistribute. Drain and reserve the curing liquid.
For the sweet miso sauce:
Crush the sesame seeds to a rough powder using a mortar and pestle, then mix well with the remaining ingredients in a bowl. The dressing needn't be completely smooth, just well-mixed.
For the vegetables:
Cut the daikon and carrot into thin strips, about 8mm wide and no more than 2mm thick. Salt them liberally and leave to drain for 1 hour - this extracts water from the vegetables to improve their texture while also seasoning them, and removes bitterness from the daikon. Rinse in two or three changes of cold water, then taste them - if they're too salty, keep rinsing. Cut the cucumber in half lengthwise and remove the seeds, then slice into half-moon shapes as thinly as possible (use a mandoline if you have one).
To serve:
Toss the fish with the vegetables and the sweet miso sauce. Pile into small bowls and garnish with chives and a few sesame seeds.
Recipe extracted from Nanban: Japanese Soul Food
by Tim Anderson (Square Peg Publishing, 2015)
