Shime Saba recipe results, in a shiso burrito.
Shime Saba means, literally, shiny mackerel. This saba recipe is very easy to make at home and the taste will be close to what you enjoy in a quality sushi bar. The visuals? Not so much, until you practice filleting, removing the silverskin and picking out the little bones a lot more than we did. But you can roll it up in a shiso leaf for a saba burrito, and the flavor will be so good you won’t care what it looks like. Makes four appetizer servings.
Ingredients:
1 very fresh mackerel, typically a bit under a pound
Kosher salt
Rice wine vinegar
Our saba fillets were not sushi-chef quality, but serviceable.
Method: fillet the fish (or have your fishmonger do it) and discard head, tail, fins and backbone. Coat both sides of each filet with salt (use more than you think you need) and lay flat in a container in refrigerator for one hour. Carefully rinse the salt off the fish (
this source suggests you dip it in a bowl of water) and pat it dry with paper towels; rinse the container. Return the fish to the container and cover with rice wine vinegar. Marinate 2 hours, turning the fish at the halfway point. Discard vinegar and pat the fish dry.
Removing saba silverskin.
Before serving, you need to remove the inedible silverskin which is a thin top layer above the shiny exterior skin. Find a place where you can get a grip on it near the front of the filet and pull down (toward the belly) and back. Hopefully you can get it off in one piece. You also need to pick out some fine bones which are hidden in the backbone area; I couldn’t locate them in the whole filet and had to pick them out after I had sliced the saba into individual pieces.
To serve, slice top-to-bottom into ½ inch thick slices. If you’ve done a good clean job filleting you can cut at an angle to expose more flesh; otherwise cut straight down. Serve on sushi rice as nigiri, or eat plain with a garnish of shiso leaves.
