I’m going to pretend you’ve gone to the local fishmonger and picked up a whole roundfish, guts and all. Usually the guts are trash too, but sometimes you want to save the liver.
We’re going to take a whole fish and make it into a head, a body, a pile of guts, and some trash. There’s more involved than water, most done with your deba. The first step with the fish is mizu-arai, water-washing. Note: if you are using another knife for mincing, such as a gyuto, you don’t need to back-bevel your deba, and can also work more easily with a slightly shorter knife, perhaps 180mm. If you have a cheap board, you’ll get huge divots, but that’s better than destroying a nice edge. When you mince, hold the handle of the knife well back and smack the heel down. This gives the heel a total included angle on the order of 45 degrees, which is strong enough for mincing whatever needs to be minced. You’re not creating a strong bevel, just digging into the flat a bit. In other words, lay the urasai of the heel on the stone, lift up about 10-15 degrees, and give it a few grinds.
#Roly poly fish heads full
If your deba is used for the full range of the traditional professional’s knife, you want to use a medium-coarse stone (~800 JIS) to back-bevel the heelmost third of it. Do not deburr strongly: single-beveled knives should be just barely stroked backwards, or you’ll grind out the backside (urasai). In my experience, this will make you pull back just that little teeny hair, and you’ll get a smooth curve from just behind the edge through the edge itself. As the knife moves away from you, just think “pull back a little,” yet try not to do it.
On your edge-dragging strokes, which do most of the work with any single-beveled knife, sharpen starting a tad higher than the actual edge. To achieve a hamaguri grind, follow the existing curvature. Bear in mind that the total included angle on a double-beveled knife sharpened at 22 degrees is 44 degrees, so we’re still talking about a very narrow angle, but the structure of a single-beveled knife helps ensure its stability. This means that by the time you get to the very edge, the total included angle is rather large for a single-beveled knife, perhaps 25-30 degrees or so. The idea is to make the bevel of the knife curve gently, like a clamshell. The main technique for sharpening a deba is the hamaguri or “clamshell” grind.
#Roly poly fish heads professional
Also remember that a deba-hōchō, in the traditional professional kitchen, is used for fine mincing, because an usuba used for mincing will tend to get caught in the board, leading again to micro-chips. When sharpening a deba, remember that it has to be both scarily sharp-otherwise you don’t get those beautiful, glass-smooth surfaces on your fillets-and extremely durable, so it’ll go through bones without developing micro-chips. If you haven’t sharpened up your deba in a while, do so now. The rest of the fish we’ll discuss another time. We’ll behead it, then turn the head into good food. We’re going to start with a whole roundfish, preferably some variety of tai, or sea bream. Otherwise, I don’t see how you’re going to pull it off. For this, you’re going to need a biggish deba-hōchō ( 180 or 210mm is a good size) or a very heavy chef’s knife.
The point isn’t just to post a recipe, of course, but to talk about knife methods. The taste is terrific… but it does involve fish heads.
#Roly poly fish heads series
Continuing this series of “ what to do with your great Japanese knives” posts, I’d like to share a recipe that may freak you out.
0 kommentar(er)
