If you like miso black cod, you’ll also enjoy this dish. It’s such an old school classic Japanese dish and reminds me of being in Tokyo at my obachan’s (grandma’s) kitchen as it’s something she used to make for us a lot.
I only really appreciated how good this dish is once I was a bit older, but the sweet miso with plenty of ginger just goes so well with an oily fish like mackerel.
I recommend batch-making this and enjoying it the next day too.
Serves: 2
Photography: Safia Shakarchi
Season: Autumn
Ingredients
2 fillets of mackerel
Around 7cm knob of ginger
For the sauce:
2 tbsp white miso
3 tbsp sake
2 tbsp mirin
1 tbsp granulated sugar
1 tbsp soy sauce
4 tbsp water
Method
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First, dab the mackerel clean then cut each fillet in half, diagonally. Score the skin with a criss-cross.
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Blanch the mackerel in hot water first, meaning you just very lightly cook the mackerel for 10 seconds or so. This is just to get rid of the impurities and stops it from tasting and smelling fishy. Just dunk the fillets in hot water gently using tongs or a spatula, then transfer them to an ice bowl. Take them out and pat them dry with kitchen roll and set them aside.
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Then, peel the ginger using a spoon and julienne the ginger as finely as you can. Most of it will go in the sauce but set some aside as the topping at the end.
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Add all the sauce ingredients and some julienned ginger into a medium saucepan. Gently place the fillets of mackerel in it. On a medium heat, bring the sauce to a simmer, then pop a baking parchment over it (scrunch it then spread it out over the mackerel) and pop a lid over it. This is to keep the mackerel in the sauce and retain the moisture of the sauce. Let it gently simmer away for 30 minutes.
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Once it’s ready, the mackerel will be very delicate and melt-in-your-mouth soft. Gently place two half fillets on top of each other, drizzle over a spoonful of sauce and a touch of ginger on top. Enjoy!
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