Welcome to FISH FOOD TIMES
Feb. 2018 issue No.170
Starry flounder sashimi & nigirisushi
Unutilized fish not to be noticed
I had the opportunity to visit Hokkaido last May and November. Of course it was not just sightseeing, it was one of the actions related to fish. And at a fishing port, I found a fish that is poorly treated without receiving any attention from the fish selling people.
The upper image on the left is a stack of fish boxes like a mountain, which contains black plaice that is often traded at reasonably high prices. The image on the right, similar to the fins with black and white spots, looks similar to black plaice, but the transaction price is very cheap starry flounder.
The following is an enlarged image of the starry flounder.
Looking at this image, I think that some people seem to be a bit strange to righteye flounder. Although the starry flounder is a Righteye flounder, both eyes are on the upper side and the abdomen is on the lower side when it turns left as same as the Olive flounder. But the starry flounder is definitely a kind of righteye flounder classified as order: Pleuronectiformes, family: Pleuronectidae, genus: Platichthys.
Fishes of Righteye flounder (family: Pleuronectidae) basically have both eyes on the right side, but most of Japanese starry flounder have eyes on the left side. The distribution of the starry flounder is wide and vast, and the number of individuals with eyes on the right side increases from the west side of the North Pacific Ocean to the east side, about 30% in the vicinity of Alaska is on the right side, near Washington State where Seattle City is located, about 50% It means that you have an eye on the right side.
The starry flounder likes to live in the brackish water area of the coastal area and the inner bay, sometimes entering the freshwater area by going back to the river, which seems to be named righteye flounder of the swamp and in the Akita district it is righteye flounder of tideland It is also called.
On the other hand, black plaice which looks similar to the star plain flounder and fillet pattern like a black white spot will also be introduced as an image below for comparison.
The black plaice is order: Pleuronectiformes, family: Pleuronectidae, genus: Pseudopleuronectes, and it seems that Cresthead is similar to this, but because it is too similar, there are many cases that you do not distinguish clearly in the fish market It seems.
Throwing away?
Well, the target fish to be handled in this issue is not the black plaice but the starry flounder. It is also called stone flounder in the Higashi district of Hokkaido, and was introduced to the person who showed me as a stone flounder rather than a starry flounder. However, since the fish called stone flounder of the same genus: Platichthys is known to have just stone-like protrusions on fish body surface, I decided to go with this standard star name flounder instead of stone flounder on this page.
The starry flounder has a shape close to rhomboid as a whole as compared with black plaice, and there are many such projections as the wart on the surface of fish body, the scales changed at the part which is surrounded by the circle of the lower image.
Starry flounder at the fish market did not have much big size like black plaice, only small size was conspicuous. It seems there is also a big starry flounder, but it seems that it is not generally appreciated because it is almost all small and yet has little fat and no umami.
However, it is the following image that I thought "This should not be ...".
This is how many fish are thrown away in huge metal containers without being listed on an auction - room even if the fish are taken from the fishing boat. Many small starry flounders were thrown into fish that were thrown away for the purpose of feeding aquaculture fish.
As I was surprised to see this situation, the person who told me about the fish market said, "Although certainly the stone flounder (starry flounder) is not very good with boiled or baked dishes because of less fat, It is delicious if you do it, but nobody likes to handle this fish pretty much, so it does not cost money and it is troublesome ... "and was saddled with sighs. Asking why, it was a reply that it is probably because cooking is bothersome with small fish.
There are various kinds of talks of this kind in fishing ports all over Japan, and it is hard to talk about topics. When having me get on the ship of the stationary net, I have encountered a scene where some of the landing fish have been thrown away to the sea outside one after another because of not being money. Also here in Hokkaido there was a mismatch of supply and demand in the same way.
As a result, even a decent size starry flounder that can be bought is traded at a surprisingly low price, and if we can successfully commercialize these, we found that there is a possibility of producing great profits.
In short, the point is that the retailer of the fish should develop a method that does not think the cooking of the starry flounder is annoying, and I thought whether it is possible or not to make a difference as to whether the starry flounder can be utilized or not.
Speedy cooking operation
So I asked a company that I was teaching to have a starry flounder purchase case and decided to experiment with the starter flounder 's speedy cooking operation by the way the buyer photographs the kitchen knife work. The price of the starry flounder, even including the shipping fee, was not even 100 yen on 1 fish, so the delivery fare was actually higher than the price of the fish.
After that, we suggested that the following process images are actually made into a manual and implemented at the store, but unfortunately there is no such fact at all in the store, and I feel regretful about that. I want you to pay attention to the starry flounder once again by informing the merit of dealing with the starry flounder this way again like this.
Anyhow at stores it should probably think that the cooking work of starry flounder is troublesome, so in order not to think like that, how to realize "speed, priority in a simple, easy way" I thought about the following process.
However, readers may have content to remember discomfort felt. It used "yanagiba kitchen knife" in all the processes to quickly cook small fish, working with disassembling and leather removal daringly pouring water into the chopping board while washing the fish with water. Of course, cutting of sashimi and sushi neta work progressed with cutting board wiped off water, but we are aware of the opinion of pros and cons as to the method of cooking work on the water that was flowing before that .
| Speedy cooking operation of starry flounder | |
|---|---|
 |
 |
| 1, Wash the fish body and remove the head without removing the scales. | 9, Cut into the tail with yanagiba kitchen knife, move the cutting edge toward the head, hold the tail of the skin with the left hand, separate the body from the skin. |
 |
 |
| 2, Scrape the internal organs of the abdomen with your fingers, wash the inside of the abdominal cavity again, and cut a yanagiba kitchen knife in the case of side with eyes. | 10, Place the body of the starry flounder which removed the skin on a dry towel. |
 |
 |
| 3, As it is as it is one side dismantling work, cut down to the abdominal side, and separate the half body as it is. | 11, Cover dry towels from both ends and absorb moisture on the surface of the starry flounder. |
 |
 |
| 4, Cut the yanagiba kitchen knife in the abdominal fins of the side without eyes, and advance towards the back. | 12, Cut the cutting edge of yanagiba kitchen knife between back and abdomen, remove the small bone. |
 |
 |
| 5, Cut as far as the back, cut off the body of side without eyes. | 13, Removed the small bones, separated into the back and abdomen. |
 |
 |
| 6, Move back and forth to scoop the yanagiba kitchen knife from under belly bone of side without eyes, and cut off the belly bone. | 14, The back of side with eyes makes sushi neta by the way of sogitukuri method with the right posture. |
 |
 |
| ７、Cut into the tail with yanagiba kitchen knife, move the cutting edge toward the head, hold the tail of the skin with the left hand, separate the body from the skin. | １５、The back of side without eyes makes sushi neta by the way of sogitukuri method with the left posture. |
 |
 |
| ８、Move back and forth to scoop the yanagiba kitchen knife from under belly bone of side with eyes, and cut off the belly bone. | 16, Sushi neta was cut off on the back side, 4 pieces on the abdominal side, completed in half body. |
 |
|
 |
|
| Pack of nigiri sushi 5 kan was completed in 2 packs with half of the starry flounder. | |
If the purchase cost of the starry flounder is assumed to be 100 yen per tentatively, the half price is 50 yen, so the net cost of only 5 fish nigiri sushi's fish will be 25 yen, which will be 5 yen per 1 kan. If the cost of shari, gari and container together is 75 yen, the total is 100 yen.
How much can a selling price of nigiri sushi of a fresh starry flounder like appearance like Olive flounder be sold? The single item product with a small number of kan like this image, the material ratio becomes high, so markup ratio is disadvantageous. However, if the number of kan of sushi together with nigiri sushi is larger than 10 kan, there will be cheap cost neta like starry flounder, so that the product will be able to increase the markup ratio more and more.
transformation
On the other hand, I made fish sashimi with hiratsukuri. Common sense Olive flounder and Righteye flounder sashimi should be based on usutsukuri, but dare to make it hiratsukuri with a sense of speed more than usutsukuri, after all the merit that the purchase cost is extremely cheap It is for making use of it.
Although the sashimi product of the image above uses 2 fishs of the starry flounder, the net cost of the fish is still around 200 yen at best, so it seems that if you use it from this volume you can set a selling price of a considerably high markup ratio.
Starry flounder can be made into a fine item if it is made into sushi and sashimi in this way. Of course, not only looks but also tasted sushi and sashimi, which are commercialized, there is no taste like fish like aquaculture fish, but its tasty flavors and elastic texture are the taste of natural fish itself, I felt that the tongue was moderately delicious.
I did not do boiling or salt-baked tasting which was said to have less fat and not recommended much. After all, after all, starry flounder leaving the protrusion like the wart of the surface intact, making it a sliced fish, even if it cooked this or cooked with salt, it seemed that appetite would not rise much because it looks bad.
In other words, because the poor appearance of the surface of the fish is losing, I think that it will be a decent feeling if you remove even the skin, but if you had done the task of removing the skin, you could reach the level of sushi and sashimi you introduced above I think that it is better to raise added value. Furthermore, because there are as many kinds of other kinds of righteye flounder that taste prevails in boiling and grilling, there should be almost no winning starry flounder.
If so, by utilizing the "speedy cooking operation" introduced in this issue, we removed the original bad appearance, devised a method of arranging, ashirai, furthermore a dish container, etc., it seems to be delicious It seems to be the best form for starry flounder to make sushi and sashimi.
For example, in ancient times as a childhood dirty clothes, limbs and face dirty black, girls who were drooling tomboy daughter, sometimes also found in human society such as a beauty beyond recognition around the age. The sushi and sashimi of the starry flounder that I introduced above this month's issue are all like that.
The starry flounder seems to be shouting as if pointing at the top image of this month's issue, "Do not throw it away! I can be so beautiful ..." in the fish box at the fish market.
Be a leader
It is like the gender of the author that sees attention to minor fish which is not attracting attention like starry flounder, and the trigger when starting the web version of FISH FOOD TIES by 15 years ago is a minor combination of fish It is to spread the idea of "Assorted shunsen sashimi" which realizes the fun of the word to this industry.
After that, FISH FOOD TIIMES introduced a number of minor fish, but recently the flow of the super fish shop is more like "fighting labor, rationalizing, Efficiency "is advocating, and the author is often saddened that the direction as if to ignore this is intensified.
In recent years around the country, the movement of realizing the utilization of unutilized fish in the tavern industry that I have been saying over the FISH FOOD TIES in 15 years has become increasingly strong, and that itself is not a bad thing and it is a welcome thing is there. However, the author wishes that supermarket fish shops want the tavern industry to move neck and neck.
There is no future for the fish shop in that the person in charge of the super fish shop knows only so-called major fish, and almost never handled other fish. Consider how one word that "you can not do that troublesome handling of cheap fish" has robbed the "opportunity for customers to eat fish".
I think the world of fish is a very deep world that no matter how hard human beings work, they never know all that. I've cooked and eaten a variety of fish until now, but I was still able to know only a small part of the fish world.
You who work in the fish industry are "leaders to guide customers' happiness to eat fish." You must acquire the skills to know, cook, eat, and provide customers with various types of fish at the forefront. Conveniently for that, there is a thing called FISH FOOD TIIMES that you can study without spending money. Try to do the same thing actually with even this in mind. If you do it yourself a new challenge will emerge from that point and finding the next task should be a step forward not only for yourself, but also for the fisheries retail industry.
An opinion and the communication are to iinfo@fish food times
Date of updating 1 Feb. 2018
