Today, bravely (if I do say so myself), I decided to try cooking fish that didn't come pre-cut. Some fish here come pre-butchered (like the dishes I made before) and some don't. I finally bought some sanma.
My dictionary tells me this is "Pacific saury" in English. However, I think all the fish I had back in America either came pre-battered and fried in stick form or was canned tuna. So "saury" means nothing more to me than "sanma," but if it helps you imagine the story better, there you go.
I've eaten fish with the head and tail still on it plenty of times in Japan, and when they (I got two) were in the package, it didn't bother me. But when I actually broke the plastic and pulled them onto the cutting board, I just kept thinking, "Those are dead fish. Yep. Dead fish. Touching dead fish. I would not touch dead fish I found them on the beach." But I carried on!
I'll admit I panicked a little, and cut the heads off right away. That seems to have been a mistake. I think I severed something that I should have used to pull the guts out, so removing the guts was pretty difficult. There seemed to be way fewer guts in the pictures in my cookbook.
Finally, I got to the cooking stage, and just kept thinking, "Why does it smell so bad?!" But it looked like the pictures in the book, so I didn't worry too much.
I added some grated giant raddish (that blob that looks like... slightly green applesauce in the picture) and some boiled eggs (that's not traditional, but I had forgotten that I was low on rice).
When I actually ate the fish, it was pretty tasty, although it has a lot of annoying little bones.
And! I realized why it smelled so bad. I apparently hadn't gotten all the guts out. When I was pulling open the second piece, there were some not-so-great-smelling cooked guts. Luckily, cooked guts gross me out way less than raw guts, so I just flicked them to the side and made a note not to chop the heads off so early next time.
End verdict: edible, but slightly incorrectly butchered. Not too bad. I am, however, curious whether the second fish, which I packed as my lunch for tomorrow, will have any guts in it. I guess it will be a nice lunch hour surprise!
Bonus video:
I'll close with a commercial. I like this one because it features Japanese high school cheer boys (it's traditionally boys, not girls, who cheer in Japan).
