Sea bream, or ‘tai’ in Japanese is one of the best loved fish and an important symbol in Japanese culture. It is in season in the spring and is called the ‘King of Fish’ in Japan. A whole tai is quite expensive and is enough for an entire meal. Here are three ways to eat one tai.

Itadakimono: Yesterday I was over at Kichisen with a friend chatting with Mr Tanigawa, as I was leaving Mr Tanigawa ordered one of his students to get a tai for me to take home. When they showed the beautiful red fish, I couldn’t believe my luck. It was huge! He also gave me some greens that I had not heard of before: hakusaina.

Sea Bream Feast Served

Sea Bream ‘Tai’

Sea Bream ‘Tai’ – Cleaned

Sea Bream Feast Served

Tai Meshi (Sea Bream Rice) – Ready to Cook

Tai Meshi (Sea Bream Rice) – Cooked

Tai Meshi (Sea Bream Rice) – Removing Meat from Head

Tai Meshi (Sea Bream Rice) – Removing Meat from Head

Tai Meshi (Sea Bream Rice) – Removing Meat from Bones

Tai Meshi (Sea Bream Rice) – Removed Bones

Tai Meshi (Sea Bream Rice) Served with Ki-no-me

Ki-no-me is the leaf of the sansho plant.

Tai Meshi
Tai-meshi is made a number of different ways and Mr Tanigawa recommended that we use the head for that. (We put the spine in too and that was a mistake as it left a fair number of bones in the rice. Surprisingly, we were able to strip the meat from the head, even the lips — with only getting a few small boney bits in the rice,)

The idea here is that the head of the tai will make a lot of excellent dashi (soup stock) for the rice. And that it did! Also, nothing should go to waste. First, the tai head is grilled shioyaki style, just for a minute or so on each side. Then the head goes in the rice cooker and is cooked on top of the rice with some ryorishu (cooking sake), salt and a bit of shoyu.

Removing the meat from the head is not as difficult as you might expect. Tai-meshi is usually garnished with ki-no-me, which is the leaf of the sansho pepper bush.

Tai Nitsuki – Simmering Sea Bream with Greens

Tai Nitsuki – Simmered Sea Bream with Greens

Tai Nitsuke
We made a light dashi with just a few small slices of ginger and simmered half the tai in it. As the end, we added the hakusaina greens as per Mr Tanigawa’s instructions. For me, it is hard to beat fish simmered in sake and shoyu.

Tai Sashimi

Tai Sashimi
The bottom half of the fillet is eaten raw, the skin is stripped off and it is simply sliced. Meanwhile, on the other half of the upper half of the fillet, and the skin that was stripped off the lower half, Mr Tanigawa poured boiling water and then plunged it into ice water.

The scalded skin is sliced thin and mixed with scallion and ponzu. (Ponzu is a citrus juice and vinegar based shoyu dipping sauce. I got this ponzu at a shoyu shinise in Kyoto and it includes grapefruit juice, a novel ingredient!) This is similar to the fugu ‘teppi‘ dish.

The ‘scalded’ sashimi with skin is dipped in ponzu and the ‘raw’ sashimi is dipped in the usual shoyu and wasabi. This contrast was particularly wonderful and the kind of surprise you get at a restaurant like Kichisen.

UPDATE: My bad, I called ‘tai’ red snapper, rather than sea bream in this article and was kindly corrected by Marc@NoRecipes. (22 April 2009)

Tataki: Tataki is half well done, half sashimi. I did some tuna cheek tataki. Back in Minnesota, when I was a kid, we used to freeze the cheeks from all the walleye we caught in an entire year to have a single ‘cheek’ dinner. Walleye cheeks aren’t very big, maybe about the size of a baby scallop. An average sized, single maguro tuna cheek on the other hand makes about half a meal!

Seared Tuna Cheek Tataki
This winter at the food court at Fuji Daimaru Department Store in Kyoto, I have often seen maguro cheek for sale in the sashimi section and had wanted to try it. I think I had maguro cheek at a barbecue once fairly soon after I washed up in Japan. And, once a chef friend of mine grilled an entire maguro head for me, as an appetizer — this is a gargantuan meal in itself! But, I really wanted to try some maguro cheek at home. At Fuji Daimaru I noticed that they also offered these tuna cheeks as tataki. Tataki is sashimi on the inside, but seared, cooked well done on the outside. I finally got a torch (just for this article) and put the beautiful sake kasu in my refrigerator to use on this one.

The steps I used are as follows:
1. Rub cheek with salt.
2. Pack in sake kasu and marinade for about 24 hours. (Add sake add needed to increase liquidity.)
3. Lightly wipe sake kasu off.
4. Grill lightly in fish grill (for super fresh tuna this might not be necessary).
5. Sear with torch (you need some high power flame for this).
6. Submerge in ice water.
7. Slice and serve.

Raw Maguro Tuna Cheek

(Sorry, no beagle for scale today.)

Marinading Maguro Tuna Cheek in Sake Kasu

Marinading Maguro Tuna Cheek in Sake Kasu

Kasuzuke: Maguro Tuna Cheek Marinaded in Sake Kasu

Seared Maguro Cheek Tataki – Searing Tuna Cheek with Torch

At this point, the cheek has already been grilled in the fish grill for about 2 minutes per side.

Seared Maguro Cheek Tataki – Searing Tuna Cheek with Torch

Seared Maguro Cheek Tataki – Plunging in Ice Water

The idea here is to ‘stop’ the cooking completely even after the direct heat is removed. (Fish keeps cooking.)

Seared Maguro Cheek Tataki – Plunging in Ice Water

Seared Maguro Cheek Tataki – Plunging in Ice Water

Seared Maguro Cheek Tataki – Sliced

Seared Maguro Cheek Tataki – Served

How Did it Taste?
Even while still raw, I was struck by the sweet fragrance combined with the rich and fatty ‘meatyness’ of the tuna. After it was grilled and seared, this was even more pronounced. The sweetness of the sake kasu and the rich oiliness of the tuna, combined with the seared fragrance was just a little too much, the center is still raw, of course. I had considered squeezing some yuzu, sudachi or daidai orange juice on it, but decided that it wasn’t needed. Even soy sauce was not needed. The sweetness of the kasu was seared onto the surface and the still raw flesh on the inside had more than a hint of sake (This is hand pressed sake kasu so there is quite a bit of alcohol left in it. Also, I marinated this for 48 hours, not 24 and that might have been a bit too long.)

About Tataki and Yakizakana
Usually the tataki preparation is with fresh, sashimi grade fish, and also fine wagyu beef. Kasuzuke fish for grilling is usually cooked all the way, like normal yakizakana. I am not sure about kazuzuke tataki though, it might be a bit nouveau. I did cook it a bit for than normal tataki as it had been marinaded for 48 hours.

Koshogatsu, or ‘little shogatsu‘ is traditionally observed on January 15th and marks the end of the Japanese New Year celebration. Mochi that has been offered to Shinto gods for the last half month is now quite dried out and is shattered with a hammer for eating by humans. The shards are cooked in okayu rice porridge, in Kyoto this okayu is cooked with azuki beans for the ‘rice dish’ of the last O-shogatsu meal. I was invited over to Kichisen to photograph Koshogatsu cuisine and the most expensive maguro in Japan, Oma Maguro, from the port of Oma on the northern most part of the Honshu main island. If I had been told it was wagyu beef, I would have believed it!

Japan’s Finest Tuna: Oma Hon Maguro

Oma Maguro is considered the very best tuna in Japan for sushi and sashimi. It is taken in the Tsugaru Strait between Honshu and Hokkaido via the ipponzuri, literally ‘one line catching’ method of fishing, using live bait on a single hook and line. Oma Maguro weigh several hundred kilos and the largest taken on record is 440 kg! The highest price ever paid for a tuna at Tokyo’s Tsukiji Market was for an Oma Maguro that weighed 202 kgs and sold for about $200,000 USD in 2001. Oma Maguro is famous for its fat content and exquisite marbling which looks nearly identical to Japan’s famous wagyu beef in which the cows are fed beer and apples and massaged by humans. This makes it prized for the best sushi and sashimi.

Oma Maguro Toro Sashimi

Master Tanigawa selected the most choice part of the tuna for this toro sashimi. It comes from the kama, or collar of the maguro. (More about kama at the links below.) If you like toro, you have to try the kama section of the fish.

If you go to a fine wagyu restaurant in Japan, wagyu sushi and wagyu sashimi will often be on the menu, this tuna looks identical!

Koshogatsu Ryori: Oma Maguro Toro Sashimi

Koshogatsu Ryori: Oma Maguro Toro Sashimi

Koshogatsu Ryori: Oma Maguro Toro Sashimi

Koshogatsu Ryori: Oma Maguro Toro Sashimi

Koshogatsu Ryori: Oma Maguro Toro Sashimi

Is it wagyu, or is it tuna?

Traditional Koshogatsu Dinner: Azukigayu (Azuki Bean and Mochi Rice Porridge)

After photographing the toro sashimi, Master Tanigawa invited me to try some Koshogatsu azuki bean okayu rice porridge and two slices of toro. Of course I was only too happy to accept!

The okayu, though including azuki beans was not sweet, it was almost bland. The kagami mochi inside was well cooked and soft enough to eat but still I could tell that it had been dried out. While eating it in a dimly lit, chilly room, I could easily imagine what shogatsu was like a thousand years ago in Kyoto. The toro sashimi, or course a very new addition to the culinary scene in Kyoto, and it was pretty incredible. I have had some pretty fine toro but this was different. It did just melt on my tongue. (I won’t torment you with the details on this one.)

Koshogatsu is not regularly celebrated by most Japanese now, though a fair number of people observe it in Kyoto. This was my first time to eat Koshogatsu food such as kagami mochi. Thank you Master Tanigawa!

Kichisen Ikebana Decoration and Otoso

The silver pot is filled with otoso: New Year’s sake.

Shogatsu Decoration: Kagami Mochi

Do you remember this offering from this article? Today is the last day of O-shogatsu and the kagami mochi in the shogatsu offerings is broken apart and in Kyoto eaten with azukigayu (azuki bean rice porridge).

Koshogatsu Ryori: Azukigayu and Oma Maguro Toro Sashimi

Oma Maguro Toro Sashimi – detail

The master said that these two pieces would set you back about $100 USD.

Koshogatsu Ryori: Sujiko Kasuzuke

Sujiko is ikura still in the egg sac. I love ikura but had never had it flavored with sake kasu (sake mash lees), it was astounding!

Koshogatsu Ryori: Eating Azukigayu and Mochi

This is a detailed article about Oma Maguro:
Japan’s love affair with Oma’s tuna | The Japan Times Online

KyotoFoodie Burikama articles:
Buri kama Shioyaki (Salt Grilled Yellowtail Collar)
Buri-zanmai: Buri Kama Shioyaki (Salt Grilled Fatty Yellowtail Collar)

Buri-zanmai Series (Part 3): Winter is the time for buri, or yellowtail. The meat is laden with oil and rich flavor. Here we make a quick and simple rice dish, Buri Sashimi and Shiso Donburi.

Buri Sashimi and Shiso Donburi:
Donburi is a popular ‘rice bowl’ dish in Japan. Here we make a decidedly nouveau, winter-themed donburi. Just fresh buri sashimi, finely chopped shiso leaves, shoyu, wasabi and a squeeze of sudachi all on a bed of warm rice makes this a quick and healthy meal!

Ingredients:

• buri (yellowtail) sashimi
• shiso leaf (10-15 per serving)
• shoyu
• wasabi
• sudachi

＊As with all home cooking recipes here on KyotoFoodie, we trust that our readers are fellow foodies and will be able to ‘wing’ the recipe and even alter and improve it.

Rice: Cook as usual for white rice. For a serving of two, use about one and a half cups of rice. Try to use Japanese-style short grain rice, ‘California rice’ is just fine.

Add dried kombu or sake for additional flavor.

We like mugi-gohan for this dish too. Add half a cup of pressed oats (oshi-mugi) if you like.

Preparation:
Preparation for this dish is quite simple. While the rice is cooking, the other ingredients can easily be prepared.

Shiso: Wash the shiso leaves and chop finely.
Wasabi and Shoyu: Grind fresh wasabi root if available. If not, use preserved wasabi paste. Mix wasabi paste with shoyu.
Sudachi: If fresh sudachi is available, simply cut in half and remove seeds.

Serve: Serve the rice in a large ‘donburi‘ style bowl and allow to cool somewhat for 1 to 2 minutes. Place the chopped shiso atop the rice. On the bed of shiso, place the sliced buri sashimi. Spoon on about 2 tablespoons of wasabi-shoyu over to the sashimi. Next squeeze on half a sudachi. If not obtainable, lime or lemon is a fine substitute. Bottled sudachi juice is also fine.

Enjoy!

Buri Sashimi and Shiso Donburi — Served

Buri Sashimi and Shiso Donburi — chopping Shiso