So this is kind of a tough recipe to do unless you’re able to get fresh mackerel or fishing yourself like Gpa was on a daily basis in Maine, but I have been told that you can buy the right kind of mackerel (shime saba) already marinated in the frozen section of many Asian grocers. You can also use other kinds of fish or even tamagoyaki for this kind of pressed sushi or Oshizushi
Gpa loved fishing and in the early years of our Maine trips, he caught a lot of fresh mackerel – almost too much. Gma finally made Gpa gut and clean all the fish before he brought it to her kitchen, but even that didn’t dampen his enthusiasm for fishing and bringing buckets filled with small mackerel (tinkers) for dinner. We had lots of fish fry dinners, lots of sashimi, mackerel salad sandwiches, and even our dog Goliath had some delicious boiled fresh tinkers. I’m still not a big fan of those oily fishes, but the one dish Gma made with a good-sized mackerel makes me nostalgic for them: Saba Oshizushi. Unlike the individually made nigiri or maki roll types of sushi we are used to getting in restaurants and some grocery stores, Saba Oshizushi is a pressed sushi, using a mold and weight. Gma said she hated pressed sushi but she made a lot of Saba Oshizushi and without a mold! She managed this with wax paper and stacks of those green, square plates that were in the Maine house kitchen. This is why this dish is one I always associate with summer!
Needless to say, mackerel was one of many things I took for granted while we were in Maine – basically things we could do just walking around the property to kill time such picking fresh blueberries and raspberries, clam digging, crab fishing, sea urchin and mussel gathering. By the time we stopped going to Maine, the blueberries had been plowed over, red tide and commercial fishing boats decimated the clams, flounder and crab population and Gpa was catching less and less mackerel.
If you’ve “caught” your very own mackerel or know a good fish monger, here is the recipe for Shime Saba:
- Very fresh mackerel – cleaned and filleted with skin on
- Salt – enough to cover both sides of fillet generously
- Rice Wine Vinegar – enough to cover the fillet in a container/tray
- Sugar – Gma like things on the sweet side so you can add a bit of sugar to your marinade to balance out the acidity
- Coat each fillet with a generous amount of salt so that the entire surface of both skin side and flesh side are covered.
- Place the fillets on a plate/tray ensuring that one side of the plate/tray is raised, so that the moisture extracted from the fillets will be collected on one side and does not soak the fillets. Leave it for 1 hour in the fridge. This is supposed to firm up the fish and remove the unpleasant “fishy” smell
- Rinse the fillet gently in water and pat dry with paper towel.
- Place the fillets in a tray or a flat-bottomed baking dish, and add rice wine vinegar so that it almost covers the fillet. Leave for 2 hours in the refrigerator. Depending on the freshness of the fish, you could leave the fillet in for longer. Gma would leave the fish in until the flesh side of the filet was white on the bottom, almost pickling the fish but that could have been because she had to use white vinegar mixed with some sugar in place of rice wine vinegar since it was not readily available.
- Place the fillet skin side down. Using a pair of tweezers, remove the small bones where the backbone was. If you run your finger along the centre of the fillet, you should feel the bones.
- Turn the fillet over and place it skin side up, pointing the tail end to the right.
- Starting from the tip of the head side of the fillet, which is on the left, pinch the corner of the very thin, semi-transparent skin and lift it up to start peeling.
- Peel the skin towards the tail and remove transparent skin.
As mentioned earlier, you and skip this whole method and find saba shime already to go.
The detailed recipe linked to uses shiso leaves and a few added steps like using a kitchen torch of the filet. Gma did not use these and I was still delicious to me!
https://www.justonecookbook.com/mackerel-pressed-sushi/