Your Favourite Japanese Food.

[fielle]

I think those little fishes may be smelts or the Japanese equivalent of them. http://www.fishbase.org/summary/speciessummary.php?id=2695

[vkladchik]

Yeah, so I asked my wife, and she did her wifely duty by laughing in her most humiliatingly tone and telling me that it's not tempura. The koromo (what is that in English, anyway? batter? crust? what do the KFC ads call it....?) is different. Apparently, it's called simply karaage, and you can see it here. And yes, it's wakasagi, or Japanese smelt, as fielle said.

[Harisenbon]

vkladchick,

Going on to even crueler foods, have you ever eaten live sashimi? As in, sashimi that is freshly cut from a live, gaping fish sitting in front of you?

Once you get past the shock value of eating a live animal, the meat is amazingly tasty.
And those suckers live for a LONG time. Mine took about 30 minutes to stop twitching, even though it was out of water and had no internal organs.

Of course, as disturbing as it was, even more disturbing was my friend who kept trying to feed the fish parts of itself.

[two_heads_talking]

vkladchick,

Going on to even crueler foods, have you ever eaten live sashimi? As in, sashimi that is freshly cut from a live, gaping fish sitting in front of you?

Once you get past the shock value of eating a live animal, the meat is amazingly tasty.
And those suckers live for a LONG time. Mine took about 30 minutes to stop twitching, even though it was out of water and had no internal organs.

Of course, as disturbing as it was, even more disturbing was my friend who kept trying to feed the fish parts of itself.

I have actually had live sashimi and have even had the pleasure of eating live prawn as well. At first I thought the prawns were a table decoration, until the host, reached in, pulled one out and proceeded to deshell it and dip it in soy sauce.. He then pushed the bowl towards me and said, you next.. So, without further hesitation, I reached in, and did the same as he did. Then after eating that, he reaches down and picks up the head and sucks out the mustard (a term used to refer to any stuff inside a shell) or brains of the prawn. While I did do that as well, I will have to admit, I liked the taste of the prawn but not the mustard.. That was not very pleasant..

[vkladchik]

vkladchick,

Going on to even crueler foods, have you ever eaten live sashimi? As in, sashimi that is freshly cut from a live, gaping fish sitting in front of you?

Once you get past the shock value of eating a live animal, the meat is amazingly tasty.
And those suckers live for a LONG time. Mine took about 30 minutes to stop twitching, even though it was out of water and had no internal organs.

Of course, as disturbing as it was, even more disturbing was my friend who kept trying to feed the fish parts of itself.

Yeah, that's a typical Japanese drunken party trick. I think the fish is technically dead after a couple of minutes, but who knows. My first date with my then-to-be (?) wife was at an upscale sushi place. I love ikasashi above all other things in life, so I picked out a squid and had the itamae slice it up. We were at the counter-seki, and the guy did his thing, and put out some pieces, and the ika was freakin pissed off, turning white-purple-white-purple-white-purple, and I was watching it, and the itamae leaned over and said, "死ぬまで待たなくてもいいよ。食べて。"

That snapped me out of my trance, and of course the meal it was great. It wasn't the first time I'd had ikedukuri, but it was the first ika I'd seen flensed alive before my very eyes, and compared to regular tai or whatever, イカの死に方はめっちゃハデやで！

[vkladchik]

up the head and sucks out the mustard (a term used to refer to any stuff inside a shell)

Do you mean in English? In Japanese, it's miso. It's an acquired taste, but I like it now. Not live crawfish, but lobster, crab, etc., even in western cooking.

[two_heads_talking]

up the head and sucks out the mustard (a term used to refer to any stuff inside a shell)

Do you mean in English? In Japanese, it's miso. It's an acquired taste, but I like it now. Not live crawfish, but lobster, crab, etc., even in western cooking.

Yes in English the lobster and crab guts are commonly referred to as "mustard" sometimes it's called tomalley too. but that's kind of a Marlyland localization and not so common.

http://grabyourfork.blogspot.com/2006/11/golden-century-seafood-restaurant.html scroll down a bit to the pictures.. (pictures 11 and 12)

http://www.bluecrab.info/cooking_faq.htm scroll down to the partion marked mustard..

[vkladchik]

up the head and sucks out the mustard (a term used to refer to any stuff inside a shell)

Do you mean in English? In Japanese, it's miso. It's an acquired taste, but I like it now. Not live crawfish, but lobster, crab, etc., even in western cooking.

Yes in English the lobster and crab guts are commonly referred to as "mustard" sometimes it's called tomalley too. but that's kind of a Marlyland localization and not so common.

http://grabyourfork.blogspot.com/2006/11/golden-century-seafood-restaurant.html scroll down a bit to the pictures.. (pictures 11 and 12)

http://www.bluecrab.info/cooking_faq.htm scroll down to the partion marked mustard..

Good to know!

[john2]

I will refuse to acknowledge that my favourite japanese food is sushi until we have a meet up at a sushi place, which includes me.