Blowfish Nanbanzuke
I had been craving ganjang gejang (Korean marinated raw crabs) and I could not, for the life of me, get my hands on ANY. I went to four of my local fishmongers and none of them had them, went to the Asian supermarket, none were there either. Supposedly the prices for them right now are too high for the markets to stock them, so they don’t.
Annoyed, I decided to go down to the docks with the kids and my husband to catch some instead. Last year the blue claws had been bountiful, and while they may end up being mostly male, they would still satisfy my craving for those delectable morsels.
Instead, turns out the blowfish are in town (video of the ones we caught today at the docks a few minutes from our house.) North American blowfish in the Long Island region are not poisonous the way Japanese Fugu are. However, because they’re here and they harass crustaceans, this meant that there were no crabs to be found. Instead, we pulled them up one by one on salted clams until we had more than two dozen (there is no bag or size limit on these in LI.) A tip, when skinning them, wear gloves. Their sandpaper skin really takes their toll on your hands.
Most of them I fried up to be served Rockefeller style, the way I did oysters the other day. A few I saved for nanbanzuke, which is a Japanese style side dish where fried fish gets steeped in a sweet and sour soy based sauce. It’s simple and delicious and a fine way to eat blowfish or bluefish snappers, serve with a bowl of white rice.
Ingredients
- 5 – 6 blowfish tails, skinned
- Corn starch to dredge
- 4 tablespoons soy sauce
- 2 tablespoons mirin
- 1 tablespoon sake
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 3 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
- 1 clove of garlic, sliced thin
- 1 jalapeno pepper, sliced thin
- 2 – 3 slices lime or lemon
- 1/4 onion, sliced thin
- Purple or green shiso, for garnish (optional)
- Vegetable oil, for frying
- Combine the mirin, soy sauce, sake, vinegar, and sugar in a bowl and heat until sugar is dissolved. Add pepper slices, garlic, onion, and lime or lemon slices.
- Dredge the fish in corn starch and fry until outside is golden. Pour sauce over it and serve. It tastes even better the next day after it’s had some time to soak in the sauce.