From the Table of Adam Guy: Japanese Stone Flounder

Recently I received this great email from Adam Guy, who also runs a great Japanese blog- The Compleat Tsuribito, it makes a great appetizer for Japanese fishing and cooking in a nice bite sized package.

Adam Guy writes:

One of my fishing buddies volunteered to drive, so we decided to go fishing for a flatfish known locally as ‘ishigarei’ (Stone flounder; Kareius bicoloratus) from the port of Kashima, which is on the Pacific coast of Japan, in Ibaragi Prefecture. My mate and I took three each, including one good-sized fish each; since this was the first attempt at this kind of fishing for both of us, we did quite well.

Unusually the ishigarei does not have scales, but instead a few bony protrusions (the Japanese refer to them as ’stones’ hence the name) on the skin on its dorsal surface, that produce copious amounts of a rather foul-smelling fish slime. However, if one removes these the fillet of the fish possesses a firm, white yet oily flesh that is quite delicious. Also, unlike most flatfish, they grow quite large and can prove quite amusing to catch; the largest one I took was 47cm long and put up a tremendous fight. To ensure their anglers enjoy the eating of their catch as much as the fishing, most boathouses will kill, bleed and de-stone the fish that you catch for you when you get back to port, and give you salt to rub into their skin to reduce the slime, before packing the fish in ice and going home.

When it came to eating my catch, first I made sashimi. It was quite delicious, without a hint of the smelliness of the live fish, with just the right balance of texture and oiliness. Each fillet is quite long, and preparing sashimi leaves one with a strip of skin that is a shame to waste, so I deep-fried these till crisp, to make an excellent accompaniment to a cold beer. I left the skin on another fillet, and simply chopped it into chunks, dusted these with flour and deep-fried them, and then smothered them with a Thai-style hot-and-sour chilli sauce, with lots of ginger and garlic, and topped with shredded spring onions. The rich flavours of the sauce go well with the white fish, which is sealed in neat crispy parcels…you couldn’t eat better anywhere in Tokyo!

Cheers,
Adam Guy