Buri Daikon

Another cooking post?  Not really.  Just an experience post dealing with food.

Japanese eat a lot of fish.  I would say that in most homes beef is rarely consumed, pork and chicken are the main and fish is probably eaten in some homes daily.  I cook fish maybe once a week or less and usually I stick to things like salmon steak or grilled salty fish.  Tetsu is not a great fish lover, I dislike cleaning fish (though I've learned to do it) and we have all these cats that go crazy when they smell fish cooking for dinner.  It is like a battleground.

"Keep your eye on dinner while I go get the soy sauce. The cats are lurking under the table!"

We have lost many a fish dinner to a sneaky feline. 

But fish is healthy and because Japan is surrounded by sea there is an infinite number of seafood choices.  It seems a shame not to take advantage of the long seafood section in our local supermarket.

Last week Y-kun brought me three daikon (icicle radishes).  I was running out of ways to use my daikon when I looked in the fish section of the supermarket.

"Buri Daikon" 

Hmm.  Yellowtail fish and Radish.  This is a pretty typical fish dish flavored in sweetened ginger soy sauce.  Can I do this?  Well, I could do it the easy way and buy slices of Yellowtail.  But people always tell me that Buri Daikon is best made with the bony parts of the fish...  All that flavorful fish stock.  And comparing prices, a nice large pack of bony Yellowtail parts was half the price of the five measly slices of the same fish.  AND there was a package of flavoring included in the pack.  I pawed through the Yellowfish bony parts packs peaking under the price stickers and shaking the packs a bit.  What am I looking for?  What I'm hoping NOT to find.  Sorry I don't want any chopped up eyeballs in my Buri Daikon.  I chose a pack with no visible eyeballs in it and took it home to cook.

Here we have the daikon.  The ginger.  The Yellowtail bony parts.  Simmer the sliced daikon a bit.  Simmer the Yellowtail.

YIKES!!!!  Rats.  There WAS an eyeball in there after all.

Combine the daikon, the ginger, the Yellowtail and flavorings and simmer well.

"Buri Daikon!  Looks delicious!  You really stepped out of your usual recipes today didn't you?"

"Yes.  I'm warning you.  There's an eyeball in there somewhere.  Eat carefully."

Tetsu doesn't mind fish eyeballs as much as I do.  He declared the Buri Daikon delicious.

"Don't give the bones to the cats.  I think they're too sharp and dangerous."

It didn't really matter.  In the night the cats raided the garbage bin and ate all the Yellowtail bones AND the eyeball.   Cleo had an upset tummy for the next two days.

I'm probably NOT going to make Buri Daikon for another couple of years.