サンマ

秋の味覚の代表的なものの一つにサンマがあります。今年は豊漁だそうで比較的安価で市場に出回っています。サンマは今が旬なので脂ののりが良く旬の味を堪能できます。今回は夕食に北海道産のサンマを調理しました。近所のスーパーで3尾300円とお手頃価格で販売されていたものです。

サンマの調理には刺身、蒲焼き、干物などあり、どれもおいしいのですが、秋の旬の脂の乗ったサンマは塩焼きに限ります。そこで今夕食のサンマは塩焼き一択。前回焼いたのと同じサンマでしたが、焼け方がうまくいくと別の料理に思えました。

いつも適当に魚を洗ってグリルで焼くので皮が剥がれたり水気でビトビトになって形が悪くなります。しかし今回は、サンマを塩水でよく洗い、水気を布巾でよく切ってから焼きました。すると驚くほどふっくら焼けとてもおいしかったです。魚は面倒がらずにしっかり下処理することで素晴らしい味と食感に仕上がるのです。

サンマはハラワタも食べられます。ほとんどの魚はハラワタ＝内蔵を下処理で取り除きますが、サンマはハラワタをとらずにそのまま調理しても問題ありません。というのもサンマの内臓には胃が無く腸も短い無胃魚だからです。サンマが食べたものは食道からすぐに排泄されてしまい体内に排泄物が溜まりません。このためサンマはハラワタごと食べても衛生上問題無いのです。鮮度の良いきれいな内臓のためそのまま刺身にする人もいるのですがアニサキスがいるので加熱調理したほうが無難でしょう。

焼いたワタの苦味は絶品で主に日本酒など酒の肴に向いているのですが、ご飯のおかずにしてもとてもおいしいのです。焼いたサンマの脂の乗った身と苦味のあるハラワタを交互に食べると郷愁に誘われます。海に囲まれた日本で祖先たちがサンマはもちろんイワシやサバ、アジといった青魚を食べてきたDNAが呼び起こされるのでしょう。西洋の肉料理と比べるととても素朴なのですが、自然を丸ごと頂いているという一体感を味わえるのは青魚料理の特徴でしょう。
サンマ料理で季節を感じるだけでなく歴史まで感じさせられたのでした。

英訳）Google翻訳

One of the most representative tastes of autumn is pacific saury. This year, there is a good catch, so it is available in the market at a relatively low price. It is in season now, so you can enjoy the taste of the season with a lot of fat. This time, I cooked pacific saury from Hokkaido for dinner. It was on sale at a nearby supermarket for a reasonable price of 300 yen for 3 fish.

There are many ways to prepare pacific saury, such as sashimi, kabayaki, and dried fish, and all of them are delicious, but the fatty pacific saury in autumn is only grilled with salt. So, the only option for pacific saury for dinner this time is grilled with salt. It was the same pacific saury I grilled last time, but when I grilled it well, it seemed like a different dish.

I always wash the fish haphazardly and grill it on the grill, so the skin peels off and the water makes it soggy and misshapen. However, this time, I washed the pacific saury thoroughly in salt water, drained it well with a cloth, and then grilled it. It was surprisingly plump and delicious. By properly preparing the fish without being lazy, you can create a great taste and texture.

You can eat the guts of saury. Most fish have their guts removed during preparation, but there is no problem with cooking saury without gutting it. This is because saury are a stomachless fish with no stomach and short intestines. Anything saury eats is quickly excreted through the esophagus, so waste does not accumulate in the body. For this reason, it is hygienic to eat saury with its guts. Some people eat it as sashimi because of its fresh and clean internal organs, but it is safer to cook it with heat because it contains anisakis.

The bitter taste of grilled saury guts is exquisite and is mainly suitable as a snack with sake, but it is also very delicious as a side dish for rice. Eating grilled saury alternately with its fatty flesh and bitter guts brings back memories. In Japan, surrounded by the sea, it probably awakens the DNA of our ancestors who ate blue fish such as sardines, mackerel, and horse mackerel as well as saury. Compared to Western meat dishes, it is very simple, but one of the characteristics of blue fish dishes is that they give you a sense of oneness with nature in its entirety.

The saury dishes not only gave me a sense of the season, but also of history.