The other thing I have grown to love is the simple Asian influenced foods here. It is typical for many people to have grilled fish, rice and miso soup for breakfast. Walking into a local style diner and being able to get that (or waffles) is certainly amazing!
In honor of this and to thank my friend Hiro for inspiring me to resume my blog after many years, I wanted to share the seasonal based Japanese cuisine that I can now also do.
The local grocery store recently had some Sanma Saury on sale. According to Wikipedia, Saury is a close cousin of the flying fish (I guess that's where tobiko comes from), since both fish lack swim bladders and skim along the water surface and thus appear to "fly". They are an Autumn delicacy when they put on delicious omega-3 fat. The Saury that the store had were frozen but still great-looking shimmering fish. Hopefully this meant they were harvested closer to Autumn and then flash frozen.
I had recently purchased a Cobb grill, which is a small charcoal fired bbq invented in South Africa. So I started the grill with some briquettes.
The Saury was seasoned simply with some soy oil and sea salt.
When the coals were ready, I added some pecan wood chips to flavor the fire.
Then I grilled the Saury for about 15 minutes.
They were served with salad and some Calrose rice (the default rice consumed in Hawai'i).
How did it taste?
The flavor of Saury was clean, sweet and oceanic, very similar to Saba mackerel. However, I had followed the tip I read about not gutting the fish but grilling it whole. As a result the mid section of the fish was incredibly bitter and surprisingly this really did complement the sweetness of the fish really well and gave it the bittersweet taste which is unlike any Saba mackerel. It was surprisingly delicious and bittersweet just like Autumn.
What a breakfast.
