Best autumn fish

[helenjp]

This is the time of year when fish start coming back from their summer holidays, nicely fattened and looking very tasty. Top of my list right now is mackerel - not really ready for thick fish soups yet, but fried fish goes well with autumny marinaded eggplant salads, or with crushed lettuce and bread salads, or even sharply seasoned potato salads with plenty of green beans.

Whole snapper are sometimes cheap at this time of year, and if you can buy large, whole fish, this might be the time for a wonderful baked fish before you put your barbeque away for the year.

What's looking good in your area?

[Blether]

We've been having a mini sanma-matsuri: shioyaki and served with Yamasa's konbu ponzu. My better half hadn't known that there was anything to sanma other than a straight grilling and eternal daikon / soy, and pronounced salted sanma by itself 'so delicious'.

This week Hanamasa came up with nama-aki-sake at under 1000yen per side - half became luscious fishcakes - already polished off - and the other half won't likely be in the freezer much past this weekend. Meanwhile I've been eyeing some beautoful-looking herring and plotting rollmops with potato salad, while it's still warm.

[Hiroyuki]

Young akamutsu, commonly known as nodoguro (lit. black throat) in my area of Japan, among others.

[torakris]

I really think autumn is the best season for fish! I just picked up some beautifully plump samna today and will just grill them with a nice sprinkling of salt. It doesn't get any better than that and they are so cheap to boot!