I spotted these beautiful slices of maguro tuna throats in the store the other day and knew I had to try them. I packed them in sake kasu to make kasuzuke and then grilled them. They were heavenly!

Nodo, literally ‘throat’, denotes innards, but maybe chin or neck might be more like it. The cut would appear to be back from the mouth and between the gills.

I wasn’t sure what this would be like. Would it be sinewy and gross, or over the top rich and creamy? We were not disappointed!!

Maguro Tuna Throat

This is yakizakana (grilled fish) that has been marinated in sake kasu for several days.

Steps

• Wipe fish clean
• Rub with salt
• Pack in sake kasu (sake kasu may need sake or cooking sake added to increase liquidity)
• Wrap and place in refrigerator for at least 24 hours (we waited 4 days, quite long)
• Wipe sake kasu from fish with fingers and/or paper towel
• Grill slowly (the fish has a lot of sugar in it now from the kasu, so be careful not to let it burn)

1. Marinate in Sake Kasu

Maguro Tuna Throat: Packing in Sake Kasu

Maguro Tuna Throat: Packing in Sake Kasu

Maguro Tuna Throat: Packing in Sake Kasu

2. Wipe and Prepare for Grilling
Japanese say that the fish should be wiped clean, but not washed with water. A very small amount of sake kasu will remain.

Maguro Tuna Throat: Ready for Grilling

Maguro Tuna Throat: Ready for Grilling

3. Grilling
The key is to not let it burn which easily happens with kasuzuke and misozuke, teriyaki for that matter too, as there is a good deal of sugar content in and on the fish.

Maguro Tuna Throat: Grilled and Ready to Eat

Maguro Tuna Throat: Grilled and Ready to Eat

Maguro Tuna Throat: Grilled and Ready to Eat

How did it taste?
As mentioned above, this is very rich, fatty and creamy — like toro. The kasu fragrance is very ‘fruity’ and that remained even after grilling. This kasu is hand pressed so the amount of alcohol left in the kasu is fairly high. I marinated this tuna for several days so the alcohol also permeated the fish. Kasu has quite a bit of sugar as well.

After grilling, the sake (alcohol) taste and the fruitiness of the kasu is not cooked out, it is obvious. The sugar content reacts nicely with the richness of the fish as it grills.

It is quite an amalgamation of flavors: alcohol, fruity, sweet and fatty grilled fish. It is rich and luxurious and not something to make an entire meal of. This should be one part of a larger meal accompanied by rice, maybe some tsukemono or veggies and some alcohol or strong tea to wash it down.

Meet Kasu Jiru: Kasu-jiru is soup made with sake lees. The sake taste is pronounced and the sweet, fruiting bouquet of fermented sake mash is obvious as well. We made this with late winter veggies and chicken.

Winter Sake Soup
Kokabura turnips are in season through out the winter in Kyoto and nanohana (rape blossoms) signal the coming of spring. Winter is of course the time that sake is being made, so sake kasu is only available this time of year.

Late Winter Kasu Jiru: The Ingredients

From the left, kokakura (small turnip), nanohana (rape blossoms), sake kasu (sake lees) and chicken.

Kokabura is translated as ‘turnip’ in my dictionary, my experience with turnips are that they are rather dry and tough. These Japanese ‘kokabura‘ turnips are quite soft and juicy though and so much so that the first time we made this dish the inner part of the kokabura just melted with only the surface retaining its shape. This time we cooked them just 7 or 8 minutes. They were tender and intact, with some fresh veggie taste still in them.

The nanohana rape blossoms still had no yellow flowers on them, just buds. They just appeared in stores this week. They are tender and rather hefty and ‘meaty’ for greens and pleasantly bitter. These we cooked for just 3 minutes or so.

Kasu Jiru: Adding Kasu to Soup Broth

Our kasu jiru is very thick with plenty of kasu. We make a base dashi with three kinds of shaved fish (comes in a tea bag), some salt and mirin. We simmer the chicken well and then add the kokabura and kasu. With the kasu we sometimes add a little bit of miso paste, to deepen the flavor, but not enough to taste directly.

The key here is good, fresh ingredients and not too much cooking.

Kasu Jiru Served – detail

Kasu Jiru Served with Black Shichimi

Usually shichimi (seven spice) is red, but the best, in our opinion, is the more rare black shimichi.

Kasu Jiru Served with Black Shichimi – detail

My favorite thing about this wonderful dish is the taste and fragrance of the fermented sake mash. It is pronounced and unlike any soup or stew that I have ever had anywhere in the world. Maybe in the Western countries we can use beer or spirits mash in a similar way?

Kasu Chinmi: Ikura is hard to beat, but salmon roe marinated in sake kasu for about a week beats ikura! This is a rather rare dish in Japan. The first time I recall having it was this January at Kichisen. After one bite, I knew that I had to try making it! Winter is the season for both sake kasu and salmon roe. It of course tastes of salmon roe and in addition has a wonderful flavor combination of sake and the fruity fragrance of fermenting sake mash.

What is Sujiko?
Sujiko, unlike ikura is still in the egg sac, ikura is individual eggs. Ikura can be cured with either salt or shoyu and the slightly sinewy egg sac is removed. Once sujiko is cured, the taste is identical to ikura and the texture is not very different.

I just packed the sujiko sacs in sake kasu and refrigerated for about 1 week. It of course keeps longer than that.

Sujiko Kasuzuke can be enjoyed as is and goes very well with sake or wine. With food it is usually served on rice, we used it to make a luxurious onigiri rice ball (see photo below).

Preparation

Kasuzuke: Sake Kasu

Kasuzuke: Sake Kasu – detail

Sujiko (Salted Salmon Egg Sac)

Sujiko on Sake Kasu

Next step is to gently cover it with kasu.

Done

Sujiko Kasuzuke

Sujiko Kasuzuke

Sujiko Kasuzuke

Sujiko Kasuzuke

Sujiko Kasuzuke

I am trying to figure out what to do with all this orange stained sake kasu now. We are certainly not going to throw it out! I am hoping that it will make excellent salmon kasu soup, we will let you know if we are able to come up with anything yummy.

Served

Sujiko Kasuzuke – served

Sujiko Kasuzuke – served

How Did it Taste?
Sujiko cured in sake kasu has a definite taste of sake and the flowery sweetness of the mash. This kasu we used this year was teshibori (hand-pressed) so the alcohol content is higher than mechanically pressed kasu. Also, I mixed in some fine ryorishu (cooking sake) to increase the liquidity of the kasu, making it better for marinading.

I have been making onigiri (rice balls) with it and eating it as chinmi on or along side rice at dinner. It is really nice! It is very easy to make and doesn’t even cost that much, but if you do the preparation you are rewarded with a very luxurious and special taste.

A friend that doesn’t drink much was over for dinner recently and was a bit surprised at the alcohol content in the sujiko! I guess she got a bit of a ‘buzz’ from it! That’s what I like, food that gets you drunk!

Sujiko Season
By the way, sujiko is in season in late autumn and early winter. I bought this in February but had to hunt around for it. I found it at the food court at Fuji Daimaru Department Store in Kyoto. I bought 6 roe sacs for about 1,800 yen. A pretty reasonable price, I thought. If it had been proper ikura, I think that it would have cost about 3-4 times that for the same amount.

Sujiko Kasuzuke Onigiri

This is from our Uri Nukazuke Onigiri article.

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.

Sake Lees: This is what is left after the sake has been pressed out of the mash. It is called ‘sake kasu’ in Japanese and it is used in home cooking in many ways to create wonderfully complex flavored dishes during the winter sake brewing season. Many traditional Japanese confection, cracker, snack companies and so on use a lot of kasu to flavor some of their products. Non-traditional things like ice cream, chocolate, bread and so on are flavored with kasu these days.

Sake kasu is a common sight in the fresh vegetable section of any grocery store in winter in Japan. The fragrance is quite fruity. Mechanically pressed sake kasu comes in ‘boards’, hard sheets of kasu, hand-pressed (teshibori) is looser and cumbly. The pictures below are of hand-pressed sake kasu. This was kasu made premium daiginjo sake and is made with Yamada Nishiki variety rice from Hyogo prefecture.

Teshibori Sake Kasu

Again, teshibori means ‘hand-pressed’.

Sake kasu can be eaten as is, the texture is quite like cheese but the taste is fruity and obviously tastes of sake. This hand-pressed kasu still has quite a bit of alcohol content in it.

Opening 2 kilos of Teshibori Sake Kasu

Kasu-jiru (kasu soup): Base for soups and stews
Kasu-zuke (kasu marinade): Marinade fish and meat before grilling
Amazake (sweet sake): Melted in hot water, served with shredded ginger

Kasu can be lightly toasted and served with honey. Narazuke is pickled dark brown neri-kasu, kasu that has been allowed to age for several months.

In the next few days we will do some recipe articles based on sake kasu. We are calling the series, Sake Kasu Zanmai. Zanmai means to be luxuriously absorbed in something. Last year we did buri zanmai, a number of ways to enjoy yellowtail.

Buri-zanmai Series (Part 2): Winter is the time for buri, or yellowtail. The meat is laden with oil and rich flavor. Here we make a classic, Buri Daikon.

Buri-daikon is a much loved winter dish in Japan. It combines chopped yellowtail (buri) heads with daikon radish and ginger, slowly simmered in water, sugar, sake and shoyu. Simmering the buri heads produces an unbelievably gelatinous saucy dashi. Everything is covered in this delectable sauce and the chunks of slow simmered buri meat that is teased away from the bone is creamy soft and sweet and the daikon is impregnated through-and-through with buri-dashi.

About Buri-daikon
Actually, this dish isn’t gross. There is lots of meat in there and it is very tender and tasty. It is a lot of fun to make, serve and eat. This dish could be the life of a foodie dinner party. If you can obtain buri head and yuzu, definitely give this dish a try. This dish might change how you think about food.

Buri-no-ara (chunks of yellowtail head), like tai-no-ara (chunks of red snapper head) is popular among Japanese for simmering in sweetened sake-shoyu broth. We procure ours down at Nishiki Market. Hon-buri (wild yellowtail) is the real deal.

The density and rich taste of the gelatin produced from the fish heads is astounding.

This is a classic Japanese dish, a few seasonal and fresh ingredients are combined in a novel way producing a juxtaposition of flavors for not just the palette, but the eyes too. Even the mind!

You’ve got to try this dish!

Ingredients:

• buri (yellowtail) heads chopped into large chunks. About two heads, one head should yield 6 to 8 chunks. (Similar large fish head may be substituted. Salmon will work too. Consult your fish monger.)
• daikon radish (big one)
• shoga (ginger)
• sugar 3 tablespoons
• sake 1 cup
• mirin 3 tablespoons
• shoyu (soy sauce) 1/2 – 3/4 cup
• yuzu

＊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.

Preparation:
Buri: If you cannot obtain buri-no-ara you can easily chop the some yellowtail heads yourself, or better yet, ask your fish monger to do it for you. It does take a great, big knife! ＊BE CAREFUL!!＊

Scald: Take the chunks and give them a good rinsing down in a colander then pour on a large pot of boiled water. In Japan, where fish is usually extremely fresh, buri-no-ara sometimes isn’t quite as fresh, so this scalding washes away any yucky bits and fishiness.

Veggies: This is all going to be simmered for an hour or so, at least. So the daikon and ginger have to hold up to a lot of cooking, so chop the pieces accordingly. The ginger should be about 5mm thick and the daikon about 3cm.

Simmer: Places the scalded buri-no-ara chunks, daikon slices and chopped ginger in a large pot, cover with water and begin to heat. Bring to a brisk boil and after 15 minutes reduce to simmer and add sugar, mirin and sake.

Cover and gently simmer for about 45 minutes. If you have a otoshibuta (wooden cover/weight) as seen in the photo below, place that over the ingredients to keep them covered in the soup.

Add the shoyu. Shoyu varies in strength and thickness. Adjust amount accordingly and to your taste.

After adding shoyu, cook for approximately 15 minutes more. Test daikon to be sure that it is cooked thoroughly. This can be done by piercing with a chopstick or slicing open with a knife.

Again, you are all foodies, so cook according to your taste and judgment.

Note: ‘Modern vs. Traditional’
Peko says that Japanese cook vegetables ‘to death’ and thinks that in this recipe the center half of daikon chunks should be cook thoroughly, but not yet be impregnated with dashi. The outer half is well steeped in shoyu-based dashi (brown), yet the center is still ‘daikon‘ (white). Paku now says that she agrees that this is also really good, but she had to be convinced. Japanese love daikon to have completely absorbed the dashi stock, like a sponge. Daikon also releases it’s own juices that further flavor dashi. The more you cook, the more daikon flavor into the dashi. You decide and tell us what you think!

Serving: Another Dilema Cold or Hot?
Like any stewed dish, buri-daikon tastes even better the next day. You may want to make this dish the day before you are going to serve it.

Buri-daikon can be served cold or hot. At about room temperature though the dashi-sauce ‘melts’ loosing it’s wonderful gelatinous quality. Served hot or warm, the dashi is a wonderful soup. Served a bit cold, or just below room temperature, it is thick and jelly-like. We both like the thick gelatinous quality of the dashi-sauce, but if it is served too cold, the full flavor of the fish doesn’t come out. Kyoto houses are cold and we are on celicius here, but in the US probably about 55-60° F might be about right.
This recipe yields leftovers so you can surely try both.

When we have cooked this dish for guests, we prepare it the day before and let it sit in a unheated room in the house until about an hour or two before serving. Then, bring it into the kitchen to take the chill off. (Don’t set it on the stove though if you are cooking other dishes as the radiant heat may completely melt the dashi.)

Add the yuzu peel and serve (see photo below). Lemon zest is a fine substitute. Peko likes to add some yuzu peel to the broth AFTER it has cooled down and let it ‘stew’ with the ingredients then add some fresh peel to garnish when serving. Lemon peel is probably too bitter to add to the broth.

Enjoy!
Buri-no-ara (roughly chopped yellowtail heads)

Start with chopped yellowtail heads (buri-no-ara), we procure ours down at Nishiki Market. Hon-buri (wild yellowtail) is the real deal.

Step 1: Pour on Boiled Water

Pour boiled water over the buri-no-ara.

Step 1: Pour on Boiled Water

This step washes away the clots of blood and any other yucky stuff.

Step 2: Simmer

Place buri-no-ara in a large pot with water and add rough sliced ginger and hit the gas.

Step 2: Simmer

Peel and cut the daikon radish into large pieces.

Step 2: Simmer

After the buri has started to boil, reduce heat a bit and add the daikon radish.

Step 2: Simmer

After the daikon radish has begun to cook and soften-up add sugar.

Step 2: Simmer — The Wooden Cover Dilemma
Paku: “Need wooden cover to keep everything submerged in the broth.”
Peko: “Oh, come on! Just put the cover on the pot. It will cook down just fine. ”

Step 2: Simmer

Simmer 20 to 30 minutes. The water content of the daikon radish is drawn out and deepens and complexifies flavor for the broth.

Then, add the shoyu mixture (sorry, not photo from cooking process).

Step 3: Garnish and Serve

This is the gelatinous broth after cooling. It is jelly when cool.

Step 3: Garnish and Serve

If you can obtain yuzu, thinly slice the mildly flavored peel from the fruit.

＊Actually, this photo is bad reference. There is too much white pith remaining. Slice it in narrower strips and a bit thinner. Unlike lemon peel, yuzu peel is very mild. If well cooked, the full thickness of the peel is fine, however we like it sprinkled on after being removed from the heat, so it is about half cooked, so you might prefer more thinly sliced yuzu peel.

Step 3: Garnish and Serve

The dashi has melted in this picture due to the bright lights.

Step 4: Eat and Enjoy!

This is a dish probably most efficiently enjoyed with chopsticks (o-hashi). The tender bits of sweet buri meat are gently removed, bit-by-bit and enjoyed with well stewed chucks of daikon radish. The ginger chucks are well cooked and can be eaten too.

Step 4: Eat and Enjoy!

There is actually much more meat here than you might expect! And very tasty!

We didn’t eat the skin and did remove the eyes from the cooked buri before serving. Large fish eyes are highly nutritious and enjoyed by some, mostly older Japanese. Paku and Peko love Japanese food, and some of the more challenging dishes, but we think that we will never eat fish eyes.

The cartilage (even the lips) is melted away into the broth — hence the gelatin. Yum! Super yummy, actually!

What do you think, foodies? Gross?

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

Buri-zanmai Series (Part 1): Winter is the time for buri, or yellowtail. The meat is laden with oil and rich flavor. Here we make Buri Kama Shioyaki.

Buri Kama Shioyaki:
Kama is the ‘collar’ of a fish, the area between the gill cover and the pectoral fin. This area and the head of the fish is said to have the most succulent meat, but it is difficult to remove. So in Japan, the kama of larger fish is grilled or simmered and the meat is gently teased out with chopsticks.

Preparation:
Preparation is simple. You just need some fish collars and salt.

Rub the buri with course salt and grill or broil. This can be done on a Western style charcoal or gas barbecue. This kama, as it is usually thick needs to cook thoroughly, so avoid too high a flame from the start.

In our Japanese gas range fish grill, this took about 15 minutes to cook. Paku says to start on the skin side of the kama. Don’t worry about burning the skin. The skin is not eaten and it will protect the meat from burning.

As the kama cooks, some of the salt will be lost to oil dripping off the fish. When you turn the fish over, you might want to add more salt to the ‘meat side’. Have a look and use your own judgment.

This is an easy dish to cook and if the kama is large enough, it can probably be eaten easily with a fork and knife as well.

I have heard the salmon collars can sometimes be had for free at a fish market or supermarket in the U.S. Try asking for the collar of any large fish that might be available, salmon, tuna, etc.

Try this dish for a dinner party, it will surely wow everybody!

Salted Kama and Other Parts

On the left is the mouth and on the right is the kama. The curved section is the gill area. The meat of the kama is the bottom side of the fish, the belly. The belly of the tuna is where the best toro is. It’s fatty, just like where bacon comes from on a pig!

Kama Shioyaki

On the left is the kama, skin side down.

Kama Shioyaki and Yuzu

A squeeze of yuzu or lemon goes well with any shioyaki, especially buri. Notice the color of the kama, the golden brown is not teriyaki or some other kind of sauce, but the natural color of well-grilled buri.

Kama Shioyaki – That’s a lot of meat in there!

Actually, there is a lot more meat in the kama than may appear to the eye. These few bits of bone and skin is all that is left.

Have you eaten fish collars? If so, where? How was it cooked? What kind of fish?