This New Year’s Eve, this dish was the “featured japanese starter” on the menu. For those who asked for the recipe, here you are! Quantities are for four persons
Ingredients
500g of very fresh salmon
2tsp freshly grated ginger
1/4th garlic clove, pressed
2tsp brown sugar
2 soup spoons Japanese soy sauce (e.g. Kikkoman 
)
75ml Sake
50ml Mirin (sweet sake)
4 spring onios
2tsp sesame seed, grilled
About 1hour
Preparation
First, cut the salmon into Sashimi-sized pieces, a little thicker than you’d usually cut them for Nigiri, but definitely less than 1cm thick. For this, use a sharp knife, your best choice would be a japanese sashimi knife.
Next, wash the spring onion, and cut off the outgrown green part, as well as the white part, we’ll be using the nice, fresh green part only. Cut this into very thin slices.
Now, it’s time to prepare the marinade. Put the soy sauce, the sugar, sake and mirin into a small pot or bowl. Mix well, making sure that the sugar dissolves. If necessary, heat gently. Add pressed garlic, grated ginger and half of the sliced spring onion. Taste the marinade, it should be pleasantly sweet, slightly hot from the ginger, and not exhibit a predominant garlic taste.
In a bowl, cover the salmon pieces with the marinade, and let stand for 30 minutes in the fridge.
Serving
Let the salmon warm a little, and arrange salmon pieces in plates. Leave some marinade on, no need to dry off the fish. Sprinkle with some roasted sesame and some slices of spring onion.
Michael’s special tips:
Salmon: It seems that wintertime is not the best time to purchase salmon around here. When we did this, we had to buy from two different sources, as we were not happy at all with the first salmon we bought. Arguably, summer, when wild salmon is available in the shops, is the right season for this dish. Naturally, the better the salmon, the better the whole dish.
Sesame: I think it is unfortunately not very widely known that sesame develops its particular flavor only upon roasting. Put a soup spoon or two of sesame into a little pan and roast it on low heat. This is a slightly tedious process, as it seems to take forever until it’s too late and the sesame is burnt.
