Recipe: kamameshi.
Photo from www.robataya-ny.com
One of my favorite NYC dishes is the salmon kamameshi, at Robataya in the E. Village. It is a very subtle dish, with steamed rice infused with the salmon cooking on top, and topped with salmon roe just before serving. The menu gives you fair warning that it takes time. When it is ready, the server comes over and asks politely if you would like for him/her to stir and serve. The answer here is yes. I once brought my uncle who stirred his too forcefully. He even admitted it was a mistake.
I took my friend Ana to have the kamameshi when she was last visiting NYC, and it’s a bit of a dream and a curse, since it’s a dish that one might start to seriously crave. On a mission, she tried a few techniques and recipes and landed on the following. (On a sidenote, I tried a version of this in the rice cooker, and while it was not as good as Robataya’s, it did help ease my hankering.) I’m excited to give this one a go!
Recipe: Salmon Rice with Ikura Salmon Roe
Ana writes:
This is the winning recipe with a few tweaks: I just used all short-grained sushi rice instead of two rice types, I used mirin instead of sake, no shiso (didn’t have any), and I used the most gorgeous, fatty, King salmon fillet I could find. I lightly placed the salmon fillet (skin side down) on top of the boiling pot of ingredients before lowering the heat and covering it all up for 13 minutes. When I opened it up after cooking, the salmon just flaked away into the rice with a fork and was rare in the middle. Delish!
