Text/Bowl Pills @ Japanese Stack
Have you seen "One Piece - Heart of Gold" remember this "Lantern Adult Everyone~" who increased the area of everyone's psychological shadow?
(Image source: iQiyi) As soon as the lantern adult opened the power of the flood, the little friends were scared to pee.
(Image source: iQiyi) So, please sit down, because this time we are going to talk about this terrible "lantern lord", which is what everyone often calls the catfish
(Image: pinterest.com) Impressive appearance
The sturgeon is a large family of 265 species in 16 families, but they have one thing in common: their impressive appearance. The author's attempts to search for slightly more dignified makeup photos of the squid in an exhaustive search, and to no avail, he tried to use Mito Hideo to polish and whiten them.
(Sturgeon may grow into these fantastical looks.) Image source: en.wikipedia.org) Some deep-sea sturgeon also cosplay themselves into rocks, although real rocks usually don't have "antennas."
(Image: bbc.co.uk) There are also some sturgeon that seem to need a hairdresser.
(Image source: divephotoguide.com, Author: Selmeczi Daniel) This is a squid at the peak of the appearance found by the exhausted author, and has tried his best
(Image source: etsy.com) Witty Jiang Taigong
A large part of the reason why the squid cannot become the "Ning Zetao" of the marine world is that their mouths are too big, so big that they are terrible. The jaws and stomach of the trout have good elasticity, and the bones are thin and elastic, so they can eat food twice the volume of their own. For the sake of food, they resolutely gave up their appearance.
(Mom says you should smile at people, huh.) Image source: azula.com/anglerfish/)
However, here's the problem. Most species of sturgeon have weak swimming ability and cannot hunt quickly in the ocean, and some sturgeon that live on the seabed even crawl mainly on the pectoral fin (how can it be a fish to be a fish?). ）。 At this speed, even if the mouth of the trout is large, it seems that there is no way to chase the prey, except for the flounder who loves Ge You.
(Uh, catch a trembling flounder alive...). Image credit: youtube/Z-BbpaNXbxg)
Sturgeon can't ride as fast in the water as sailfish, but they don't feel sorry, after all, genes determine fate. They developed another set of hunting skills , the Jiang Taigong fishing method. Female sturgeon have a slender "fishing rod" on the top of the head, which evolved from the first dorsal fin spine, and the top of the rod has a sac-like flap that can take various forms to lure prey or males to court (of course, from the fate of the male squid mentioned below, the boundary between prey and male squid is not so clear).
(Flirting with a pure shrimp ~~ Image source: youtube/Z-BbpaNXbxg)
The cystic flap looks like a harmless little fish, and other fish who don't know the truth are often seduced by it, and just as they are dreaming of their own low-hanging fruit dinner, they are caused ten thousand damage by the catfish. This method of hunting with fishing rods and flaps to flirt with other fish is to be idle, energy-saving and environmentally friendly, and the seemingly sluggish-eyed trout Jun turned out to be an old driver who was deeper than the Fichats Abyss in the city government.
(Then, ┗| 'O′ | ┛ Oops~~.) Image credit: youtube/Z-BbpaNXbxg)
Maybe you've noticed that the "lantern" of the "Lantern Lord" we see in One Piece - Heart of Gold is lit up. Yes, some deep-sea sturgeon, such as the horned sturgeon, also have their flaps with their own illumination. In the dark and boundless underwater world, what could be warmer than a soft glimmer? Whether it is for prey or opposite-sex partners, there is infinite attraction.
(Image source: blog.nus.edu.sg) So how do these lighting effects come about? The light is actually a symbiotic bacteria from and near the flap of the sturgeon, taking the flap of the squid as home, and giving back to the sturgeon by luminescence, lighting up their lives. It feels like the body is hollowed out
As early as the 19th century, scientists began to study the life habits of the horned trout. But they found that the subjects they found were always females, so where did Dad go? Scientists have been studying it for a hundred years in confusion while eating the trout.
In 1922, Icelandic biologist Bjarni Saemundsson discovered a female horned squid attached to two small trout, which he suspected were juvenile sturgeon, but found this "nibbling old" state difficult to explain reasonably. By 1924, Charles Tate Regan, a researcher at the British Museum of Natural History with a big brain, finally realized that the small sturgeon attached to the female squid was not a juvenile fish, but an adult male! sex! Boom! Trout! fish!. The reason why scientists have not found male horned trout in the past hundred years is because they never expected that different sexes look so different.
(Male sturgeon cling to female sturgeon.) Image source: slideshare.net) Male horned trout are several times smaller than female horned trout, have no fishing rods on their heads, and do not have a big mouth, they have only the extraordinary ability to capture female pheromones and biological light. Their only faith in life is to find their female ticket in the vast sea. Then, they bite the skin of the female sturgeon, release enzymes to digest their own body and the skin of the other party, and finally the two blood vessels are connected, successfully combined, the male digests most of his flesh, including fins, internal organs, brains and the like (with love, what do you want to do with the brain), leaving only the sperm nest left for the goddess to use at any time.
(Image source: theoatmeal.com/comics/angler) You may think that this is the legendary poignant love, far away, coming for love, hollowing out the self, and growing old with the child. However, the other side of the story is actually quite realistic. Because there is no fishing rod and large mouth, the male horned trout hunting ability is about equal to zero, they have lived a life of starvation from birth, the only chance of turning over in life is to lean on a female horned trout, and then they can live a wide-hearted, fat, high-minded life, although in the end the brain, body and so on are gone, but compared to the single male horned trout who has no pain at the bottom of the sea early, this is the winner in life.
(Image source: brokeneye3.deviantart.com) It is not easy for the horned trout living in the deep sea to meet a member of the opposite sex (singles shed two lines of tears~), so for the continuation of the species to form such a strange courtship mechanism, the domineering female horned trout does not pursue monogamy, and it is not uncommon for multiple male horned trout to be attached to the female horned trout. But in the species of sturgeon that are not so difficult to meet with the opposite sex, some females and males only maintain a brief attachment during the courtship period, while others remain independent. A delicacy that transcends times and loves
Having said so many terrible things, the frightened babies crawled out of the underwater world with me and talked about eating sturgeon in Japan
Japan is known as "Kansai puffer fish, Kanto trout" (finally found the simple logic of writing squid after writing pufferfish), and the trout is deeply loved by the people of Kanto. During the Edo period, the five treasures of "three birds and two fishes" (cranes, larks, sea bream, and catfish) were known in Japan, including sturgeon.
(Image source: Food Sticker)
The main types of squid eaten by the Japanese are yellow sturgeon (キアンコウ) and black trout (クツアンコウ). They looked just ugly, not fantastical, and let everyone down. Warning: The following 4 sturgeon life photos may cause visual damage, if there is discomfort, please quickly throw your phone out of the window ~ ~ ~ ~
(Yellow sturgeon.) Image source: zukan-bouz.com) The body length of the yellow sturgeon is about 1.5 meters, and the body color is yellowish brown, mostly in the north of Japan; while the black trout is about 1 meter long, the body color is dark brown, mostly in southern Japan. The majority of the market is yellow sturgeon, also known as the ben trout.
(Black sturgeon.) Image source: naxnet.or.jp) The world of squid has always been a situation of yin and yang decline, and the male of the yellow sturgeon is also much smaller than the female body, the female weighs 20 to 30 kg, while the male is only 5 to 10 kg. Although the yellow squid is not a species that is attached to the female for life like the horned trout, it is mainly seen in the market as females, and there are few opportunities to taste the white of the fish. The catch period of Japanese sturgeon includes two periods: May-July and October-February, and the winter catfish is the fattest, the catch is more abundant, and the price will soar to 5 times that of summer, making it the best season to taste the catfish. Famous production areas of sturgeon include Fukushima Prefecture, Ibaraki Prefecture, Chiba Prefecture, Yamaguchi Prefecture, and Aomori Prefecture.
(The Sturgeon Festival in Kazemaura, Aomori Prefecture.) Image source: masakari-maturi.com) is only a step or two away from eating the sturgeon, but these big monsters are not at all satisfied with handling them, and they need special skills to get them. The body of the trout is huge, the body surface is covered with mucus, it is not easy to operate on the board, so the Japanese cooks have come up with the method of "hanging and cutting", using hooks to lift the fish mouth, injecting a lot of water from the fish mouth to support the fish body, peeling off the skin, removing the internal organs, cutting the fish meat, which is both easy to operate and can properly remove the complete internal organs, because the internal organs of the squid fish are also the highlight of the cuisine.
(Ibaraki Prefecture washed sturgeon hanging cut.) Image source: jyouhokusys.livedoor.biz) Sturgeon can be made into sashimi. After 36 hours of live slaughter, the umami taste of the salmon meat is further released, and the elastic meat quality is also very distinctive. In addition, fried sturgeon and teriyaki catfish are also common sturgeon dishes.
(Sturgeon sashimi.) Image source: tsukijigo.cocolog-nifty.com) Long winter night, in addition to eating a puffer fish hot pot, the catfish hot pot is also the choice of healing system, and compared to the puffer fish hot pot, the catfish hot pot seems to be much richer in content. The sturgeon hot pot is boiled with "Seven Treasures of Sturgeon" with vegetables and broth. The Seven Treasures of Sturgeon include fish meat, fins, skin, liver, ovaries, fish stomach, and fish cheek meat.
(Sturgeon hot pot, ah, a lot of onions ah ~ ~ image source: r.gnavi.co.jp)
(Seven treasures of the squid.) Image source: isohara.co.jp) Fish cheek meat is a more distinctive part of the sturgeon, because the sturgeon is originally a fish with a large face and mouth. The cheek meat of the sea bream in a normal proportion in fish accounts for about 2% of the total body weight, but the cheek meat of the catfish can account for about 11% of the total body weight.
(Sturgeon cheek meat.) Image source: amanaimages.com) The squid pot has two ways to open. In Ibaraki Prefecture, an important producer of catfish, the hot pot is synonymous with heavy taste. Locals first fry the liver of the salmon in a pan to make oil, and then use the liver oil and miso to make "turbid juice (どぶ juice)" to season the hot pot, the color is intoxicating golden yellow. It is said that the practice of "turbid juice" comes from local fishermen, because the winter sea is lonely and empty, and the fishermen invent such a practice, which is convenient for saving water (the water content of the trout itself is about 85%), and can also provide high-energy food.
(Ibaraki sturgeon pot.) Image source: ibarakiguide.jp) Elsewhere, the normal way to open the hot pot is to flavor it with miso or soy sauce, the practice of seasoning with miso is more common, and seasoning with soy sauce is the elegant style that the pavilion likes. Either way, in the end, like puffer fish hot pot, it is necessary to add rice and make a miscellaneous cooker to live up to a pot of collagen.
(Tokyo Isegen's trout hot pot.) Photo credit: r-tsushin.com) Founded in 1830, Tokyo's old shop Isegen (いせ源) is one of the most famous specialty shops in Japan that specializes in sturgeon dishes. They use sturgeon from the Tsugaru Strait, which are processed alive (live killing can delay the appearance of zombies and inhibit the loss of umami, as detailed in my article on sea bream) and hanging cut, and then use Japanese broth as the base of the soup and season with soy sauce to make a squid hot pot. Referring to Isegen's crayfish hot pot, cuisine critic Hattori Koyo once said: "This is a delicacy that transcends the times and love, and suddenly captures the heart of the son of Edo." ”
(Ise-en.) Image source: r-tsushin.com) From the description of "turbid juice" above, we can know that the liver of the trout is the soul of the heavy flavor version of the trout hot pot, and the trout liver itself is also a food with a variety of methods and a soul-destroying taste. In Japan, when the autumn breeze whistles, people start queuing up at seafood markets to buy trout liver. Some fish shops will directly sell steamed fish liver, and customers can buy home wine to accompany it, which is very comfortable. The liver of the trout has a smooth and plump feeling like foie gras, and is often served with vinegar, shallots, radish puree and wasabi to dissolve.
(Sturgeon liver.) Image source: hitosara.com) Salmon liver can also be cooked with miso, sake, miso, shallots and other seasonings to make "mixed fish liver (とも和え)".
(とも和え。 Image source: amanaimages.com) Why is the liver of the trout so likable? Because it has the fat content of everything else in cod liver. Compared with red meat fish, which hide fat in the flesh, the fat of white fish is often stored in the liver, and it is especially important for the catfish that like to wait in the deep sea and have an unstable food source in the liver. The fat content of trout liver is really high enough to make people jump, every 100g of trout liver contains 41.9g of fat, 41.5g of water and 10g of protein, it is not difficult to understand why the sturgeon liver has such a smooth and tender texture, and it is not difficult to understand why it is called "fat foie gras in the sea".
(Don't eat me, I'm just a kid!!! Image source: azula.com/anglerfish/)
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