Too early to have this fish!

 

This time, we went to fusion sea food restaurant Hoepocha to enjoy fresh raw fish dishes before weather gets too hot to have them. It is March and the best season to have Hoe or Korean style raw fish cuisines will be over soon.  The fish, however, we had this time was Japanese seabass (Nongeo in Korean) and it is known that one of the exceptionally best summer raw foods.  In Korea, the bestseller fish in the seafood markets are olive flounder, rock fish, sea bream, sea bass, and salmon.  Among these, seabass is more delicious during summer days because this fish spawn in fall and consequently, they begin to prepare for reproduction in summer and same is true for croaker (Mineo).

In fish markets, both wild caught, and farm raised seabass are available. There are few species that show different characteristics when they are served as raw fish dishes and seabass is one of them. The muscle of wild caught seabass is bright and back is light gold, but farm raised bass has darker color. These days, almost 80~90% of this fish in markets are farm raised and 50% of them in Korea may be imported from China. It is well known fact that China is the number 1 producer of seabass. Experts argue that the bigger the seabass, better the taste.  Personally, so far, I tried few times and I do not have chance to prove these claims as I did not check how big they were before processes for serving. The one we had in this restaurant (photo below) show bright colored muscles and I inclined to believe that it was wild caught although I did not ask chefs.

This seabass (Japanese seabass) is different from North American seabass or grouper and live in the seas near Taiwan, China, Japan and Korea. Younger seabass like freshwater, so they can go back to coastal areas or the estuary of the river when they mature. In Sumjingang, the river in the southwest part of Korea, people often witness fry and adult in the middle and lower stream due to the seawater encroachment. The full-grown adult fish can reach 132 centimeters in length.

Some Koreans dislike this fish because the texture is too soft, but for this reason kids love to eat including Leo. I personally like seabass for the same reason. Here, in Korea, many seafood manias love chewy, crunchy and crispy texture than softness when they bite a slice of fish. If you are such type of epicure, then this fish is not for you.

In Japan, seabasses are aged and eaten as fresh fish sashimi. According to chefs, if you take advantage of rigor mortis of fish by allowing few hours in the freezer then it is possible to achieve chewy and crunchy texture to enjoy. The cutting procedures with sharp knifes are also important to guarantee roughness of surface of sliced fish and unique texture. Usually, seabass dishes come with baby clam & cockle soup, seaweed or sea lettuce salad, fried herring, fried cons and squid-cabbage salad in sweet and spicy sources. After finishing main dish, we were served spicy fish soup made with leftover fish flesh, organs, bones, and crown daisy (edible chrysanthemum or ssukgot). For foreigners, this type of soup may be too spicy, but you can always ask chefs not to put sources too much and you could have adjusted taste. This is exactly what I did because Leo is 9 years old and dislike anything too spicy.

Although having this fish is unseasonal, we loved its prominent softness and will come to this place again in summer for better taste.