The hardest fish in the world is not a "wooden fish" knocked on the chant, but a small tuna called "bonito". As a seafood resource, it is very famous in Japan, often made into dry and hard "wooden fish", we are familiar with "wooden fish flower" is used to plan out.
Bonito, Japanese name かつお, tuna family, bonito genus, alias bomb fish, small tuna, China's Hainan Island, Taiwan Province, Guangdong coastal distribution.
There are more than 60 species of tuna worldwide, but only 6 are available for fishing trade, and bonito is one of them, and it is the most productive!
The body of the bonito is spun and conical, the body is thick and scaleless, the surface of the body is smooth, the body length is mostly 0.5-1 meters, and the tail fin of the bonito is very developed, so it swims very fast in the sea. Because there are 4-6 dark stripes on the abdomen after death, people have given it an alias of "six stripes".
Bonito often migrate in groups, feeding on small fish, shrimp and squid in the ocean. There is a very interesting phenomenon that bonito likes to swim behind the butt of a whale or shark, which is a special symbiotic relationship. In this way, not only there is food to eat, but whales and sharks can also play a role in protecting themselves.
The bonito swims very quickly and has a long endurance, so the British call it a tuna that can jump high. The Americans called the first batch of nuclear submarines "Bonito-class attack nuclear submarines", which means to run fast and have a long range. There are also merchants who use bonito endurance to make health care products, some to supplement athletes' physical strength, and some to use in another aspect of life (you know). As for the efficacy, the average person can't say it clearly, maybe it's more of a psychological effect!
Bonito is a very nutritious delicacy, it is rich in vitamins, trace elements, as well as DHA, EPA and other unsaturated fatty acids, and the price is very affordable.
There are two periods of the year in which bonito has the best meat quality, the first is the "first bonito" in March to May, the bonito in this period has very little fat, the meat is tight and delicate, and it is more suitable for drying; the second is the "autumn bonito" in September and November, during which the bonito meat is fat and fat, which is very suitable for fresh food.
However, due to the fishy smell of bonito, it is eaten with firewood. Therefore, it is not suitable for sashimi, and many of them are processed into canned, dried fish, fish floss and so on. The world's hardest ingredient, "dried bonito", is made of it, the Japanese like to call it "bonito", and some people have used it as a knife.
The preparation of this dried fish is not complicated, it is first peeled and boneless from the bonito, then steamed and cooked, and finally smoked repeatedly until dry. Because the finished product is as hard as wood, it is named "wooden fish" (hereinafter referred to as bonito). If you're seeing it for the first time, you'll definitely think it's a moldy piece of wood!
After drying, the bonito not only loses its fishy taste, but also becomes a top delicacy, becoming the most commonly used freshening condiment in Japanese cuisine. Because the texture is hard, it must have matching tools when using it.
The bonito made of bonito back meat is called "men's day", because there is very little fat, and it is thinly sliced, plus the taste is delicious and refreshing, so the price is more expensive; the abdomen is called "women's day", which is easy to turn into powder and is more suitable for making soup.
The wooden fish fillets, wooden fish flowers, and wooden fish essences that we are familiar with are all subordinate products of the Bonito Festival, and many Japanese soups are also made from it.
Many food bloggers often appear in the video of the ingredient wooden fish flower, which looks very tall, in fact, it was once the food of the poor in Japan. People eat it on white rice, which is called "cat rice" in Japan. Because the Japanese often feed cheap bonito to cats, this kind of rice sprinkled with wooden fish flowers is jokingly called "cat rice".
In Japanese cuisine, a dish called "Cold Slave" is very popular in summer, where wooden fish flowers are placed on top of lactone tofu and eaten with a sauce. It is said that this dish was created based on the patterns on the clothes of Japanese people in the Edo period. (I don't know how to associate food from clothes)
Whether it's a wooden fish flower or a wooden fish fillet, why do I think it's the same as squid fillet? To paraphrase a movie line: "Dried bonito, hard bonito, bonito knot dry and hard".
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