Sometimes my cooking gets into a Euro-American rut. When I’m feeling lazy, my thoughts turn to burgers, pasta, pan-roasted salmon. Too long without Asian food, however, I get cranky. So I’m going to try to remind myself to cook something Asian at least once a week.
Tonight, it was a recipe from Eric Gower’s cookbook The Breakaway Cook. I am not sold on the title or the cover photo of this book, but otherwise it’s great. The author lived in Japan and concocts simple recipes with flavorful, mostly Asian ingredients: matcha, pomegranate molasses, miso, and so on. I made a fantastic broiled mackerel dish, and I’ll give you the recipe in a minute, after I put in a plug for mackerel.
A few months ago I took a fish cooking class at [Culinary Communion](http://www.culinarycommunion.com/). It was fun. We were handed whole trout and had to skin and fillet them. We ate shrimp and grits. At the beginning of the class, we introduced ourselves by name and favorite fish. My favorite fish is mackerel. This turned out to be an unexpected and punk-rock choice. Not even the instructor was a big mackerel booster.
Epicurious offers 19 mackerel recipes and 411 salmon recipes. There are no Google hits for “mackerel fan club.”
One of my favorite defunct Seattle restaurants was Takohachi, best known for its salt-broiled mackerel and bacon fried rice. If there had been a mackerel fan club, this would have been its headquarters. Since it closed, I’ve been in mackerel withdrawal, mostly eating it raw at sushi places. They don’t sell mackerel at my local supermarket.
Yesterday I was doing some shopping at Uwajimaya and drifted into the frozen fish section. Uwajimaya sells at least two dozen species of vacuum-packed frozen fish, including some beautiful Norwegian mackerel fillets. (And whole mackerel, of course.) Two mackerel fillets, each enough to serve an adult, will set you back $6 total. Aren’t you glad there’s no mackerel fan club? I let them defrost overnight in the fridge. They were fantastically easy to cook and every bit as good as any mackerel I’ve eaten anywhere. I’ve struck gold–well, silver–in my grocer’s freezer case.
Curious, I went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch site to find out about the sustainability of the Norwegian mackerel fishery. They don’t mention Norwegian mackerel. I guess nobody asked.
Iris loved the mackerel. We’re starting a fan club.
**BROILED MACKEREL WITH SOY, LEMON, AND BUTTER**
Adapted from The Breakaway Cook
Serves 2
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon unsalted butter
1 teaspoon maple syrup
2 mackerel fillets (6 to 8 ounces each), rinsed and dried
Freshly ground black pepper
Kosher salt
Lemon wedges
1. Preheat the broiler. Put the soy sauce, lemon juice, butter, and syrup in a sauce pan and heat over medium heat. Cook three minutes, stirring often, until slightly thickened. Brush the fish with the soy sauce mixture on both sides and sprinkle lightly with pepper.
2. Broil the fish until brown and crispy, about 5 minutes. Flip and broil until crispy on the other side (the skin side is easier to burn), about 3 minutes. Sprinkle with additional salt to taste and serve with lemon wedges and rice.
I have to agree with you there, mackerel, especially smoked is probably my favourite too. I think its more popular in my home country, england.
I’m glad you like mackerel as much as I do! Thanks for cooking from my book, and let me know if you ever have any questions!
kampai,
Eric
Dude, way to make me feel bad for picking on the book cover. I have my eye on the Cauliflower “Couscous” next. Thanks for the comment.
They have a good miso glazed mackerel at the japanese restaurant in tangletown. I had some last week and it was really really good. It’s called Kisaku, the restaurant that is.
I like Kisaku a lot and should go there more often. I’m not sure whether I’ll make it there first or make miso-glazed mackerel at home first.
Well, there are two in our house that like Mackerel – the mother and the toddler. sadly, around here it is usually found either in sushi joints or smoked. Admittedly, both are good, but I would love to have the mackerel I had when I was in Oregon a few years ago…
Mackerel is amazing. Nice and oily, and really great smoked – as we all know! Back in Blightly you could find it everywhere. I remember days when I was a lad, going down to the local seeside town, and fishing for mackerel. If you were lucky, you could get 3 or 4 on the line at once, if a decent school was coming in (you would fish with multiple hooks on the line..) I haven’t cooked it over here though.
I miss Takohachi’s mackeral too! Haven’t tried Kisaku’s version, but I love the mackeral sushi at Shun and IIRC, Toyoda does a serviceable version of shioyaki. Oddly, I’ve never cooked it at home, but your recipe sounds like a good place to start. I’ve eyed those frozen filets at Uwajimaya, wondering how they’d be…now I’m going to go get some!
Matt, since I know you’re in Seattle, you’ve got to head down to Uwajimaya and get some mack. I am calling it “mack,” because it sounds snappy.
All this talk of mackerel reminds me of the worst recipe I have ever heard of: Fluffy Mackerel Pudding
http://www.candyboots.com/wwcards/fluffymackpudding.html
I read that book! It didn’t turn me off mackerel, but the thought of pudding gives me the jibblies.
yay! mackerel is also my favourite fish, at least for sushi — I’ve never tried cooking it myself. I’ll have to give that a go.