Kinmedai Splendid Alfonsino Premium Cooking

Japan (Izu Peninsula — Atami, Shimoda; Kochi Prefecture also significant; deep-water Pacific and Indian Ocean)

Kinmedai (金目鯛, Beryx splendens — splendid alfonsino) is a deep-sea fish renowned for its vivid gold-red skin with golden eyes (kin = gold, me = eye), abundant subcutaneous fat, and extraordinary flavour when salt-grilled or simmered. Despite the 'dai' (bream) suffix, kinmedai is not related to true sea bream (madai) but has come to occupy a similar luxury position in Japanese cuisine, particularly in Atami and Shimoda on the Izu Peninsula and in Kochi Prefecture. The characteristic fatty skin is kinmedai's defining feature — the subcutaneous fat layer renders during cooking, basting the flesh from within and producing crispy, deeply flavoured skin on the exterior when grilled at high heat. Nitsuke (煮付け, simmered in soy and sake with ginger) is the most traditional kinmedai preparation — the fish simmered briefly in a strong sweet-soy sauce that reduces to a glaze, the fat from the fish enriching the nitsuke sauce. At high-end counter restaurants, kinmedai is prepared as kaburamushi (steamed under a layer of grated turnip) in winter, or served as sashimi where the skin is briefly flame-seared (aburi) to melt the fat layer. The Izu Peninsula is synonymous with kinmedai in the same way Niigata is with koshihikari rice.

Rich, fatty, oceanic sweetness with crisp golden skin; fat renders to create a basting effect; deep savoury flavour intensified by nitsuke sweet-soy glaze