To go with some delicious soba I received as a souvenir from a student, I made up some aji tataki:
Aji is horse mackerel, a popular fish available year round but especially good in the autumn, when it puts on fat. Tataki literally means beat, and is one of my favourite things to do with aji- it involves chopping up aji sashimi with shiso (perilla leaves), green onions, ginger and hatcho miso (a deeply flavoured red miso), and splashing it with soy sauce and sudachi (a small lime-like citrus) juice.
It is a fantastic mix of fresh flavours that goes very nicely with sake. But I had a dry white wine instead. Not because I'm a rebel or anything though- I had a good reason. The soba I made came from a winery in Nagano (a place more famous for soba than for wine). Soba is usually paired with sake, but the soba package says their sommelier recommends white wine for this soba instead. Probably heresy to most sake lovers, but the truth is white wine does go very well with a lot of Japanese food.
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