When I eat something first time and feel it’s very delicious, I cannot forget that experience even it was in a child.
Do you have similar experience?

Spanish mackerel is one of my favorite fish.  It is called as “Sawara” in Japanese.  The kanji of sawara contains two characters “fish” and “spring.”  Now spring is the season of it, and I can see many in the market.  But it is not good price fish ( I feel a little bit expensive.)  One day, I found very good price and bought it without hesitation.

However there are some cooking methods for this fish, I like “miso-zuke (miso marinated)” is the best.  Miso is a fermentation food.  To marinate foods in miso, those foods becomes a little bit dry and the taste will be better.  Miso-zuke is traditional method for preserving foods longer days, and marinating not only fishes, but also meat or vegetables.

I made it as same method as saikyo-zuke which I wrote before.

Ingredients :

• Spanish mackerel
• 200g miso
• 2 table spoon sake (30ml)
• 2 table spoon mirin (30ml, sweet rice wine)
• Sea salt

How to cook:

1) Cut Spanish mackerel as appropriate size and put some sea salt.  Leave it about 30 min.

2) Combine miso, sake and mirin well in a storage.

3) Wipe the fish pieces to take water and put them in 2).  Cover fish pieces by miso completely.  After packing the storage, leave it in refrigerator more than one day.

4) Pick up fish pieces and wipe extra miso (do not take everything).

5) Place them on the grill and grill on a middle heat.  It is easier to grill if you place it on crashed foil.  Miso is easy to burn.  If you place it on the grill directly,  it is difficult to turn over.

We eat it without any sauce.  Miso has some salt so it has already enough taste.
This method is used for not only Spanish mackerel, but also salmon, cod etc.

The interesting thing is traditional Japanese fish cooking method is not using oil.  I guess oil was expensive and also is related with Japanese way of cooking which try to enjoy the taste of foods originally has.

Enjoy meal!

Fish grills are available on Amazon.com. Please refer following links.