Sea bream

An hour under kelp: sweetness concentrates, flesh turns translucent.

Salt, skin, fire. Nobody has improved on shioyaki in 400 years.

Sweet dense flesh needs sour more than it needs anything else.

Grilled whole, dressed hot, so the oil goes into the flakes.

Raw white fish is sweet and quiet. Ponzu seasons and cures it on the plate.

Lean white flesh, no fat to fight the perfume. Zest, not juice, on the sashimi.

Lean white fish has no fat to hide behind, so it takes the green sweetness.

Sharper and greener than lemon, and it stops before perfume.

Tai-meshi: the fish steams on top, the rice takes what drips.

Rice alcohol has no acid to bruise a fish this delicate.

One leaf in the cavity. Any more and the sweetness disappears.

Clean white sashimi with a floral bud instead of wasabi. Subtler, less nasal.

Ground seed and soy over raw slices, then hot rice on top.

Salt and bitterness against a fish that has neither.

Slice both thin. Pear water reads as the fish own moisture, one texture.

Aegean resin on an Aegean fish: pine and sea, nothing between.

Iodine on iodine, and it turns the broth the colour of the skin.

Lactones on both sides. A crudo that reads as sweeter fish.