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The scene
A number of things have happened since the last post, but since we're nearing the end of the film, I will leave out the details for you to find out yourself. This is the final scene in which food is featured in a major way.
There will be a fireworks show in the evening and Suzu and her friends are going to watch it from Miho's family's boat. Sachi has given Suzu her old yukata to wear for the occasion. Suzu and the crew have once more stopped by Ninomiya's restaurant for something to eat, perhaps for the last time. Ninomiya is going to close the restaurant she has been running for most of her life.
Yoshino has been helping her out so Ninomiya gives Suzu a container filled with Yoshino's favourite food, marinated fried mackerel, and tells Suzu to pass along her thanks.
Ninomiya says she envies Suzu's mother and father because they left behind such a treasure in Suzu. Suzu doesn't think she is a treasure at all but Ninomiya sternly advises her not to say things like that or it'll bring bad karma for her.
She then tells Suzu to have fun and enjoy seeing the fireworks reflect off the ocean and sends the girl on her way.
The food
Ninomiya tells us exactly what she gives Suzu: it's aji no nanbanzuke, mackerel that has been deep-fried and then marinated. You can see the marinade in the container in this screenshot:
Ninomiya's famous dish is made with mackerel but you can make nanbanzuke out of just about any fish. The key is deep-frying the fish first and then marinating it. So that's exactly what we'll be making.
Recreating the food
Ah, I couldn't get out of this without one final deep-fried dish, huh? Well, I'm a veteran now, so it's no big deal.
There are plenty of different recipes for aji no nanbanzuke out there. They have some minor differences, for example which exact vegetables to use, how to fry the fish and what goes into the marinade, but they're all still fairly similar, so I don't think you can really go wrong with any one of them. I ended up using the recipe on NHK World (NHK is Japan's national broadcaster) as a base because it required me to buy the least amount of ingredients but modified it slightly inspired by other recipes. Here are other recipes I used as a reference: Hamadayama Life, Japan Centre, Cookmap.com.
I again had the problem of mackerel not being available to me, so I went with what worked the last time: Finnish vendace (pre-gutted). I sprinkled some salt on the fish and set them to one side.
Then I sliced the vegetables. The NHK World recipe only uses green peppers and onion but a lot of websites included carrot in the dish, so I added one of those. I sliced the green pepper and half of an onion and then made thin strips of the carrot with a peeler. I also let the dried chili soak in water for a while until I cut it into small bits. I then took Hamadayama Life's advice and layered some of the vegetables onto the bottom of a plastic container.
I then prepared the marinade: rice vinegar, soy sauce, water, sugar, salt. Easy enough, just mix it enough to make sure the sugar and salt have dissolved. Then I added it into the container with the veggies.
Then it was time to fry the fish! Again, I don't have a deep frier so I had to make do with a normal frying pan. I put maybe an inch of oil onto the pan and let it heat up on medium high while I coated my pre-gutted vendace in white flour. Use the spatula trick to check the temperature of the oil and drop those suckers in. Fry them for a few minutes (flip over if not using an actual deep frier), then drop them into the container with the veggies and marinade. When the fish were all done and in the container, I layered the rest of my vegetables on top. I had just the right amount for my one-liter container!
Ah, but there was a problem. The marinade covered barely half of the vegetables and fish. Luckily enough the marinade was very easy to make so I just made another batch of it. Be prepared for that!
I closed the lid and stuck the container in the fridge. There are varying ideas about how long you have to marinate the fish for, some saying you can serve it immediately, some saying you should wait at least an hour and some saying you should wait overnight. I really wanted to try the dish so I did both - I sneaked a couple of fish out of the container about two hours later and then made a proper dinner out of them the next day.
Trying it out
The recipe tells you to serve it with cooked rice, so here is my recreation of Ninomiya's marinated fried fish dish.
As a whole, this might be one of my favourite dishes to come out of this project. The marinade is vinegary but since it's rice vinegar, it's not overpowered with an acidy taste. The soy sauce brings its own unique flavour and some saltiness to the mix as well. Together they do magic, and the fish and vegetables become unbelievably delicious! Finland has a long history of preserving vegetables and fish in vinegar and I already love that stuff, but this feels like the next-level version of that, what with the added flavours of the rice vinegar and soy sauce. Absolutely fantastic. I definitely understand why this was Yoshino's favourite dish now.
There were some differences between the fish I tried early and the ones I had for dinner. The fish I'd fried just an hour before had a slightly crunchy texture and were delicious but it was clear the marinade had yet to do all of its magic. The fish I had for dinner were softer but had fully absorbed the flavours, as had the veggies. Honestly - try both!
Also, if you want to skip frying the fish, see if you can get pre-fried fish at your local supermarket. I made the dish a second time using vendace that was pre-fried and the result was exactly as tasty and a lot less messy on my end. I think you could probably get great results with just about any fish using this method, but I'm not sure.
Recipes used
Aji no nanbanzuke recipes:
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