I picked up some sparklingly fresh mackerel from the excellent Steve Hatt and decided to have a go at making tatsuta age mackerel. I substituted the more traditional potato starch with rice flour and used rice bran oil for frying. I used to have this all the time in my school lunch when I taught English in Japan, but had never actually tried making it myself – it was much easier than I thought it would be. Bite sized chunks of mackerel are briefly marinated in fresh ginger, sake and soy before being drenched in seasoned rice flour and then deep fried until crisp.
ingredients
4 fresh mackerel fillets
2 tbsp sake
2 tbsp grated fresh ginger
1 tbsp mirin
seasoned rice flour or potato starch
rice bran oil
thinly sliced spring onion
slices of lemon or lime
method
- combine the sake, soy sauce, mirin and grated ginger
- cut the mackerel pieces into bite size pieces and marinade for 10-15 mins at room temperature
- Heat up the oil in a wok or deep fryer
- Drench the fish pieces in the seasoned flour and deep fry until golden
- Drain on plenty of kitchen paper, sprinkle with the spring onion and serve with the citrus slices
Gastrogeek 
Superb. I have one more mackerel left. I was going to do a mexican ceviche or something but I might give this a try as well.
I hate mackeral, but this looks delicious! I can’t wait to try it.
Oishiii! This looks so good, I may try it over the weekend if I can find some good fresh mackerel – all the constituent flavours sound perfectly matched for this much-derided fish…
Signe, it truly is Oishii (although I make no claims about it being as good as the stuff you had in Japan)!