Kabayaki sardines (Iwashi no kabayaki)

If you can get butterflied sardines, this is an incredibly quick and flavour-filled meal to make – the cooking is only a little over 5 minutes.

Kabayaki sardines (Iwashi no kabayaki). Credit: Smith Street Books / Emiko Davies

• serves

  3-4

• prep

  5 minutes

• cook

  7 minutes

• difficulty

  Easy

Ingredients

• 12 plump sardines, butterflied (or see Note to butterfly them yourself)
• potato starch (or katakuriko starch)
• steamed rice, to serve
• pinch of sansho pepper

Kabayaki sauce

• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 2 tbsp mirin
• 2 tbsp sake
• 2 tbsp sugar

Instructions

1. To make the kabayaki sauce, put all the ingredients in a small saucepan and simmer over medium heat for 2–3 minutes. Don’t take your eye off it – the sugar in this small amount of liquid can burn easily if the heat is too high. You want to reduce it ever so slightly.
2. Preheat your grill or oven to its hottest setting. Dust the sardines in potato starch – this helps keep them moist and the crust soaks up the sauce nicely.
3. Arrange the sardines on a grill pan or baking tray and place under the hot grill (or on the highest oven shelf) for 2 minutes. Remove and baste with kabayaki sauce, using a pastry brush, then grill for another 2–3 minutes, depending on the size of your sardines. Baste again.
4. To serve, place the sardines on top of large bowls of rice and baste again so that the kabayaki sauce seeps into the rice and flavours it too. Finish with a sprinkle of sansho pepper.

 

Notes

• I adore unagi (grilled eel); it’s always been a very special treat in my family. Unagi isn’t something you would normally make at home: it is always a restaurant delicacy, not only for the preparation of the slippery live eels, but also for the smoky charcoal grills. However, this version with sardines is so quick and easy to make at home – not to mention sustainable, unlike eel – and it replicates the flavour and texture I so love.
• To butterfly sardines yourself, scale and remove the heads first. Use your hands rather than a knife: this is called ‘tebiraki’. Remove the guts (make an incision with a knife along the belly first) and then, because a sardine is so tender, you can run your thumb and thumbnail along the length of the body to open it up like a book. Use your thumbnail again to separate the bones, and especially the spine, from the flesh. Cut the spine from the tail, and I like to snip off the fin that runs along the backbone with a pair of scissors too.
• You could also fry the sardines or even cook them on a barbecue, but I find grilling them easiest. Just be careful not to overcook them as this is so quick.
• For vegans, use fried or roasted eggplant (aubergine) slices instead of sardines.

This is an edited extract from The Japanese Pantry by Emiko Davies (Smith Street Books)

Cook's Notes

Oven temperatures are for conventional; if using fan-forced (convection), reduce the temperature by 20˚C. | We use Australian tablespoons and cups: 1 teaspoon equals 5 ml; 1 tablespoon equals 20 ml; 1 cup equals 250 ml. | All herbs are fresh (unless specified) and cups are lightly packed. | All vegetables are medium size and peeled, unless specified. | All eggs are 55-60 g, unless specified.