Anger Burger

Occasionally, I register my disgust on the internet, like so:

I was so disappointed today when I went to purchase my usual
weekly box of Alpen and discovered the familiar, cheery red and white
box was now a badly-designed dull brown.  Such poor graphic design!  The
photographs of the grains and the color palette look like something from
the 70’s – and not in the happy, Scandinavian way that Alpen looked
before.  I’m not sure what possessed you guys to change the box so
drastically, but I’m sad to see it.

Sincerely,
Sunday

What am I going on about?  Oh, why, just this totally retarded box redesign from my favorite healthy cereal, Alpen:

Please tell me I’m going nuts, because where I’m standing from, this looks like a lovely, sort of retro but pretty delicious-looking cereal that has been transformed into a 1970’s-made-for-TV-movie cereal comprised of mulch, horse hay, compost and owl pellets.

Alpen had this to say in its defense:

Thank you for the email giving us your review of the new Alpen box
design.  We are very sorry you didn’t like the new graphics.

We appreciate receiving our customers’ suggestions and comments about
our products, and we have forwarded your comments about the packaging to
the appropriate department to take under consideration.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any further comments.
We hope you will continue to enjoy our other products in excellent
health!

Regards,
Kathy Zorn
Technical Services Coordinator
Weetabix North America
Barbara’s Bakery Division

Kathy, I didn’t respond because I don’t want to be the lunatic who keeps emailing you about the Alpen box, but I just want to understand what is happening.  Do you want Alpen to fail?  Was this an act of vengeance?   A spurned lover down in the box design department, perhaps?  Some Republican scheme to torture eaters of hippie cereal?  The last part I’d understand, but in all seriousness, it’s working.  Each time I pour a bowl of Grim Alpen for myself, I think, here’s one bowl of muesli closer to my demise.

I can think of only one thing a vegan ever taught me: how to make all-natural homemade cookies taste like storebought.

Perhaps you are asking yourself, why would a perfectly nutbag vegan baker want their cookies to taste like Chips Ahoy?  Hopefully you are answering yourself, too, because I got nuthin’ other than: because they taste like forbidden.

The secret ingredient, for whatever reason, is cardamom.

I swear this to be true.  The next time you make chocolate chip cookies, whatever your regular recipe, add maybe 1/8th of a teaspoon (up to a 1/4, taste the dough as you mix) of ground cardamom — so little that you essentially can’t even taste it — and it’s like a magical artificially flavored fairy came along and tinkled on your cookies.  I’ve mentioned this here before, but I thought I’d reiterate having just recently made my favorite Immature Style chocolate chip cookies again.  I’m telling you: cardamom.

Instead of a big lead-in, I’ll get to the point: make this recipe.

I lied.  There’s a lead-in.  You see, I’ve mentioned this before, but I have this habit of finding recipes online and belligerently believing that there is something wrong with it, even though it is alluring to me.  Perhaps because it is alluring to me.   To put a finer point on it, I tend to believe recipes are too good to be true.  It’s a strange quality of my kitchen hobbyism, and one I’ll just lump under the amorphous description of Anger Burger, like some complex Zeitgeistian German description-word.

Emma Christensen over at The Kitchn shows up with this “Lemon-Scented Pull-Apart Coffeecake” which immediately sends me into rage mode (wtf with that name, yo?), in no small part because her photos of it look fucking delicious.  Immediately afterward the in-laws came for a spell and the recipe went to the not-literal backburner.

And then, today.  Which shall forever hence be known as THE DAY THE LEMON BREAD ARRIVED.

I am reluctant to say anything that might dissuade you from making this bread — after all, I got it right in one try, and that’s saying a lot — but in all fairness, it’s a hair finicky.  Sort of.  I think if anything, it takes a little faith courage.  For example, the dough itself is a little on the sticky side, and as much as I hate recipes that say “you might need a tablespoon of flour to help keep the dough from sticking” (usually this means “YOU’LL NEED SIX TABLESPOONS AT LEAST”), I fought the urge to load it down with more flour to better knead the dough with.  In this instance, wetness is your friend.  Wetness means a nice texture.

The description for how to form the bread is confusing at best, and an incomprehensible logic puzzle at worst.  As Emma Christensen says, the best way is to just visualize what you’re going for (a loaf of individually shaped slices) and go with a gut feeling.  Also, seeing photos of the final product helps a lot.  In a nutshell, you’re rolling the bastard out and layering.

I think that Emma is onto something with allowing the dough to rest overnight in the fridge.  When the time came for me to roll the dough, it was fussy.  I ended up fearing for the worst the entire time I was making the layers; mashing and pulling and pinching each floppy, warm, recalcitrant layer into place, until I was certain I had molested the dough beyond its ability to work it out in therapy.

I was wrong.  Even with this struggle, the bread was perfect.  The bottom gets that cinnamon-roll bottom thing, the sugary, sticky, candied thing.  The top fins are crunchy.  Each piece is saturated with just enough lemon zest to make you smell lemon on your own breath for the next hour.  Ugh.  I’m so full right now and I’m still salivating thinking about it.

So while its a little more work than making cinnamon rolls from scratch, I think it might just be a superior product.  Each sheet is thin and double-coated in lemon sugar.  The loaf shape encourages picking at, the kind of thing you serve for houseguests as a late breakfast and come off looking like Captain Domesticpants, Ph.D..

Long story short: I think this is my Gladiator sweet bread.  Forged in adversity.  Tested in battle.  Victorious in the belly.

Lemon-Scented Blah Blah-Blah Blah Blah
i highly encourage you to read both Emma Christensen’s recipe comments and the original recipe in addition to reading mine (mine has very few alterations, just to be clear).  all together they provide a slightly easier time of it.

dough
2 3/4 C. all-purpose flour
1/4 C granulated sugar
2 1/4 tsp. (1 envelope) instant yeast
1/2 tsp. salt
1/3 C whole milk
2 oz (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
1/4 C. water
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
2  eggs, at room temperature

lemon filling
1/2 C. granulated sugar
the grated zest of 3 lemons
the grated zest of 1 orange
2 oz unsalted butter, melted

• Stir together 2 cups of the flour, the sugar, the yeast, and the salt in a bowl; set aside. In a small saucepan, heat the milk and butter over low heat just until the butter is melted. Remove from the heat, add the water, and set aside until warm (120 to 130°F), about 1 minute. Add the vanilla.

• Pour the milk mixture over the flour-yeast mixture and, using a rubber spatula, mix until the dry ingredients are evenly moistened.  Mixing by hand, add the eggs, one at a time, stirring vigorously after each addition just until incorporated. This can be done in a stand mixer, but isn’t necessary.  This is also very fussy and takes some patience.  Add 1/2 cup of the remaining flour, and resume mixing until the dough is smooth, 30 to 45 seconds. Add 2 more tablespoons flour and mix with a little more vigor until the dough is smooth, soft, and slightly sticky, about 45 seconds.

• Sprinkle a work surface with 1 – 2 tablespoons flour and center the dough on the flour. Knead gently until smooth and no longer sticky, about 1 minute, adding an additional 1 to 2 tablespoons flour only if necessary to lessen the stickiness. Place the dough in a large, greased bowl, cover the bowl securely with plastic wrap, and let the dough rise in a warm place (about 70°F) until doubled in size, 45 to 60 minutes. While the dough is rising, make the filling.

• OPTIONAL ALTERNATIVE: After letting the dough rise, stick the whole thing into the fridge and allow to chill over night.  The next day, resume recipe as normal.

• In a small bowl, thoroughly mix together the sugar and the lemon and orange zests.

• Gently deflate the dough. On a lightly floured work surface, roll out the dough into a 20-by-12-inch rectangle. Smaller is better than larger.  Using a pastry brush spread the melted butter generously over the dough. Cut the dough north-south into 5 strips, each about 12 by 4 inches — again, erring smaller is better than larger here since the second rise will fill up the gaps in the pan.  Sprinkle 1/5th of the zest-sugar mixture over one of the buttered rectangles, lightly rubbing and pressing the sugar into the butter. Top with a second rectangle (it’s ok to manipulate it roughly into place, it can take it) and sprinkle it with 1/5th of the zest-sugar mixture. Repeat with the remaining dough rectangles and zest-sugar mixture, ending with all your rectangles now all stacked on top of each other.

• Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly grease a 9-by-5-by-3-inch loaf pan. You don’t need to flour or parchment it.

• Slice the stack  through the 5 layers to create 6 equal sections, each about 4 by 2 inches. Fit these layered strips into the prepared loaf pan, cut edges up and down, like a loaf of sliced bread. Remember that the dough will fill the space up as it rises a second time, so don’t feel like it has to be perfect.  Loosely cover the pan with plastic wrap and let the dough rise in a warm place until puffy and almost doubled in size, 30 to 50 minutes. Press the dough gently with a fingertip. If the indentation remains, the dough is ready for baking.

• Bake the bread until the top is golden brown, 30 to 35 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack and let cool in the pan for 10 to 15 minutes.

• To remove the bread  from the pan, gently run a butter knife between the bread and the pan.  Have a cooking rack ready where you want the bread to go.  Using a clean, doubled kitchen towel in your left hand and a oven mitt on your right (switch that for lefties), pick up the pan with your right hand and lay the towel over the top of the bread, covering it with the towel.  Now, holding your left hand firmly over the towel and bread, gently turn the pan over into your left hand, letting the loaf free.  Quickly then, gently roll the bread back upright onto the cooling rack.  It might come apart.  Such is the way of things.

• If you are so inclined, drizzle the top of the warm bread with cream cheese icing, as follows:

3 oz. cream cheese, room temp
juice of one lemon
1/3 C. powdered sugar, sifted

• The bread is best, by far, when still warm.

One of the reasons I don’t shop at Whole Foods is because I become obsessed with foods I can’t afford.  Still, a treat every now and again never hurt anyone.  That is, if you take care to ensure the definition of “every now and again” doesn’t translate to “weekly.”  If I used heroin, I suspect I’d be one of those “weekender” heroin addicts.  It’s fine.  I only use on the weekends.  Recreationally.

So anyway, speaking of heroin: Dinon is an Italian company that makes ready-to-eat seafood products, and to be frank I have to stand before them in the refrigerated section and ask myself what else I should be spending $10 on.  And it usually takes me a really long time to come up with answers.  Sometimes, I don’t have an answer at all, and one of them comes home with me.

The white anchovy filets are absolutely gorgeous, like all their products.  These things are incredible fancypants social slut appetizers straight out of the plastic container.  They’re not terribly fishy or salty like you might think (Americans are totally fucked over on the anchovy front) and are instead lightly vinegared, lightly seasoned, and tender.

It’d be a shame to do anything with them but eat them with water crackers.  Maybe not, maybe that’s my empty pocketbook talking.  Sometimes I like to imagine cooking with these, pushing them into homemade focaccia or roughly chopping them up and adding them to a really fresh new red potato salad.  Then I gulp and think, those little fuckers were ten dollars! And then I suckle on them like Omega-3-saturated gold nuggets.

Sorry if you don’t have a Whole Foods in the area. You’re probably better off, in the long run.

Well, that was interesting.  After my best friend and my dad expressed a kind of “Oh, Sunday,” disappointment – dost thou not knowest me? – and my mom pointedly said nothing, I guess talking openly about human body parts is officially Too Far.  I hereby apologize for the Vagina Chicken post.

So instead, today I’m going to talk about oysters.

I have a spiritual connection with oysters.  According to my mom, she craved oysters while pregnant with me (she also frequently watched Julia Childs on PBS, for what its worth), and in a favorite family anecdote, once when I was about 3 I was left on the beach to sit next to the oyster bucket while my family harvested their limit from the shore, only to come back and discover I had smashed open all the already-collected bivalves with rocks and eaten their mangled insides.   Little Neanderthal baby.

A common misconception about oysters is that the shucked ones in jars are no good – this is certainly can be true, but provided they are harvested during a good time of year (right now is perfect) and are fresh, they are just as good as the ones still in their shells.  Granted, we’re very lucky in that we can drive straight out to Taylor farms, home of the best oysters in the world, but the basic idea is still there: as long as you’re not eating them raw¹, the ones in the jar are probably just fine.

A little egg wash and crushed saltines is all these kids need.  Keep the heat high, and as quickly as they brown they will be cooked through, after which you can eat straight from the pan or make a quick homemade po’ boy sammich with a nice soft roll, some shredded lettuce and whatever condiments you like.

My preference is to eat them straight from the pan with a little bit of cocktail sauce.  It’s been icy cold here, so these oysters are heartbreakingly delicious – sweet, clean and firm.  We made a little homemade Caesar salad and nothing else, and I haven’t had more satisfying meal in recent memory.

Here’s an older but nearly identical seafood meal from the last time I visited my mom about three months ago.

¹ And the only reason I recommend cooking them is for texture – nothing beats a fresh, raw shucked oyster, but if you’re going to cook them, don’t bother with both the price and the tremendous pain-in-the-ass of shucking.

I feel kind of dirty for doing this, but it’s nevertheless something I can’t get off my mind: a list of kitchen gift ideas.  To make myself feel better, I am proud to say that most of this stuff will be almost too late too order for Christmas and certainly too late to order for Hanukkah.  Take that!

1. Sur La Table Melamine Mixing Bowls

For some reason these give me a massive kitchen boner, the red set in particular.  Is it the stacking?  The clean rims?  The Goldilocks not-too-shallow and not-too-steep profile?  I dunno, but I’d sure love to replace my heap of mismatched steel bowls with these.  Did I mention they’re only $30?  They are.  Sigh.

2. Wood’s Boiled Cider

Jesus, will I ever stop talking about this shit?  Nope.  It’s gone into my pies, tomato sauces, Malt-o-Meal, salad dressing, onto pancakes, et cetera et cetera.  It’s not cheap and I certainly don’t recommend using it as a base concentrate for apple cider as their website suggests (though as a cocktail addition it would be incredible) but as an ingredient kept floating around in the fridge, I find myself adding it to — and improving — more recipes than I ever thought possible.  In fact it just occurred to me: mixed with powdered sugar, it’d make the perfect glaze for my sherry spice cake.  VICTORY!  In all seriousness – this is just literally boiled cider, a reduction of apple juice.  You can probably make it yourself provided you have a stock pot, some cider, and some way to make a flame.  On the other hand, Wood’s is a family-run artisanal business that has been doing the exact same thing the exact same way for over 120 years, and I have a kind of awe for that, as well as a well-documented predilection for extreme laziness.

3. Aunty Lilikoi Passion Fruit Products

This, like the boiled cider, is one of those luxury goods that I sort of cringe at just because shipping makes it unsatisfying to order just one item, thus making the endeavor into question of monetary flexibility, but as a bona fide passionfruit addict I have to say: this is the best you can get in the United States.  The bottles of pure passionfruit juice make amazing cheesecakes and ice cream (true: I pour it straight over vanilla ice cream and let it sort of freeze on it and then dig in, nomnomnom!), cocktails (use instead of lemon juice and whatever you’re making is now the tropical version) and salad dressing.  Once, my mom and I made a dressing for apple and shredded carrot salad that was just a little unflavored yogurt, passionfruit juice, mustard, poppyseeds, salt and sugar and it was absolutely incredible.  People gobbled it up.  And by people I mean me.

4. Now Designs Floursack Towels

These have been around for ages and with good reason: they are useful beyond compare but Now Design took it a step further and made them in a range of bright colors.  Normally flour sack towels are either natural cotton or bleached white, both of which I’ve had and both of which turned a decomposed-looking shade of zombie skin after just a few weeks of regular use and no amount of bleaching could get them presentable.  Of course these are three times the cost ($9 – $11 for three) of plain ones, but I’ve thrown away two sets of skanky plain ones and still have my old Now Design ones.

5.  Vintage Kitchen Timer

I bought one of these kitchen timers on sale from Anthropologie a while back, and it has turned into one of my favorite kitchen gadgets.  I bought it mostly because the blue was nearly a match for my Tiffany-blue kitchen at the time, but it turns out to be the handiest damn thing.  It’s magnetic, too, but really I like it because of the analog component; the ratcheting around of the timer makes me feel like I’m gettin’ down to business.

I’ve been seeing a company called Bram Cookware around the interwebs lately, and today on Apartment Therapy again so I decided I’d point ya’ll toward the recent object of my desire: the totally unneeded and voluptuous 9 quart Bean Pot:

I never thought I’d be so mesmerized by a clay pot, but there it is.  The finish, I should note, is not a glaze but an effect of hand-burnishing the surface with river rocks.  The more I learn about this pot the more I understand what kind of douchebag would have it in their kitchen, but I can’t stop loving it.  I feel like Patrick Bateman.

Anyway, Bram cookware is priced fair for what it is — the bean pot, for example, is about $100 — particularly when considering that a Le Creuset is going to run you more.  The downside is that Bramware is clay and unlike the Le Creuset can be fatally damaged by irresponsible cooking, and I think we can all imagine that moment where we drop it on the floor and gasp as a thousand pieces of clay and hundred dollar bills blip off into oblivion.

It’s wrong to be thinking about something like “investment cookware” at a time when I’ve switched to the cheap mascara, but a girl can dream¹.  You, on the other hand, might be a little more flush.  Bean pot, anyone?

¹ Dad – don’t even think about getting me one of these. I’m serious. I know you can’t afford it and I won’t be delighted, I’ll be pissed off and I swear to god I’ll put you in a home.

“The green onion and the garlic are like friends!  Always friends.”¹

I have a powerful love/hate relationship with cooking shows.  Mostly I hate them, even the ones I like.  For example, I like the way Giada De Laurantiis cooks, but I get burned out on watching her giant, smiling balloon head in very short order.  And even though I think cooking is a sexy craft, I find myself rebelling against the hyper-affluent, homogenized landscape of the modern cooking show, even modern food photography, all bright-white and staged to look casual.  These worlds of the Food Network, I can’t put myself in them.  Sunday doesn’t belong there and neither do you.

Enter: Maangchi!

Maangchi is an internet sensation, a simultaneously charming and all-business antidote to all that Gwyneth Paltrow driving around Spain bullshit.  Don’t believe me? Check it:

How cute is she?  As a button, I tell you. I can also tell you one thing for certain: if you and I suddenly appeared in her kitchen with her, she’d waste no time handing us knives and having us get to work along side her and that is the kind of kitchen I love.

And those leaves she’s using?  Are the Korean variant of shiso, which I’ve professed my love to before here on Anger Burger.  The Korean version, often called “sesame leaf”, is much bigger than the Japanese version and has a tougher leaf and different flavor, more minty than basil-y.  The way she uses a leaf to scoop up rice at the end of the video?  Oh man, I’m literally uncomfortably full from my own dinner and I still want some of that.

Long live Maangchi.

¹ A Maangchi quote from her video for making kimchi stew.

“Nothing tastes as good as being skinny feels.”

-adage often attributed to     supermodel Kate Moss

Yes well, I think we can agree that Kate Moss has never been faced with a plate of broiled mackerel before.  I’ve already expounded on my affair with mackerel as a sushi fish, where it is pickled like a Scandinavian delicacy, but I failed to mention how I first really came to fall in love with the fish.

The Japanese call it “grilled mackerel” or saba yaki, and that is, simply, what it is.  It might be more accurate to call it saba no shioyaki which would be “mackerel grilled with salt”.  Either way, the result is the same: a piece of incredibly tender, oily fish with a crisp, edible skin.  The fish is so rich that it is traditionally served with lemon and a large pile of grated radish, both of which I didn’t have and both of which I can live without — well, I do really like the grated radish.  But you catch what I’m pitching.

Foremost, as you can see, it’s a cheap fish.  Under $4 to serve two people dinner is pretty incredible (of course there were lots of sides, but I don’t count those).  Saba can be difficult to find in Western fish markets, but they’re always there, lurking, in the Asian markets.  Even though the local Japanese market had them fresh, I chose this frozen one simply because I didn’t know when I’d be cooking it.

And what an incredibly gorgeous fish it is, right?  So predatory and majestic, even when small enough to fit into the hand.  The skin itself feels like the finest calf leather, soft and smooth.  I really do respect this creature.  If it were a man it’d be a small, lithe ninja of a man.

Anyway, I prepped it but cutting it into two servings, slashing the meat deep several times and then bagging it in sake to marinate while it thawed the rest of the way.   The saki part isn’t necessary, but it ever-so-faintly “sweetens” the flesh, or deadens that very fishy-tasting outer layer.  About 10 minutes later the sake is rinsed off, and then salt is rubbed into the flesh.  Since it is going to be eaten with lots of rice, it is actually nice to oversalt it just a smidge.

And then there’s the small matter of my not having a grill – no biggie, the pieces were broiled about 4 or 5 inches from the element  for about 7 or 10 minutes, KEEPING CAREFUL WATCH ON IT, until it is brown and crackly and you can barely keep from snatching the skin right off and eating it like a potato chip.  You will think that the fish is losing a lot of water, but you are wrong: it is oil.  Sheets and sheets of oil with the highest levels of Omega-3s that you’ll ever encounter.  And a small amount of mercury, so don’t eat it every night.

Broiled Mackerel (”Saba no Shioyaki”)
this fish is very rich, so don’t plan on serving more than a 4oz portion to a single person – but it doesn’t seem like a lot of food, so have lots of sides with your rice, like miso soup and some quickly prepared vegetables.  Also note that you can do the same with a whole (cleaned) fish, but you’ll have to turn the fish when one side is done broiling and then do the other, and that the underside will no longer be crispy.

mackerel fillet
1/4 C. sake
salt

• If using frozen, thaw the fish overnight in the fridge OR run under cold tap water for about 10 minutes which should thaw it about half the way.  The fillets aren’t terribly thick or anything, so don’t bust your balls over this part.  Now would be a good time to feel along the meat to see if there are any bones, which there almost certainly will be.  If you can pull them out, do so, but in Japan it is not considered terribly important to remove the bones before cooking.  If they aren’t already, cut them into single portions and then slash each portion deeply (but not all the way through, Scissorhands) with a sharp knife.

• Either in a very small, shallow dish or in a ziplock bag, marinate the fillets in a little sake.  Let sit for 10 minutes while you start your rice cooking and/or whatever else.

• Very quickly and lightly rinse the fillets and pat them dry.  Season generously with salt, taking care to rub it into the slices you made into the meat.  Line a small, low-rimmed pan¹ (like a cookie sheet) with aluminum foil and place the fillets on it skin side up, close to the center and about an inch apart.  It depends on how your broiler is set up, but you want them to get equal exposure to the heat.  Adjust the rack to be about 5 inches from the heat and turn on the broiler.

• Broil for 7 to 10 minutes, or until the fish starts to curve up to meet the heat and the slashes you made open and start leaking oil.  The skin itself will brown and possibly bubble.  It’s okay is small areas get very brown, those will be the tasty bits.

• Remove from the heat and eat immediately with lots of hot rice.  Keep a towel handy for wiping the dripping oil off your face.  Oh, and watch out for bones!  Mackerel have large bones, but they are very sharp.

¹ I actually use the small tray that came with my toaster oven since it’s light and just big enough for two pieces of fish.

Sushi mackerel and shiso leaves?

Is perhaps one of the best flavor combinations ever to be existing.

Now, sushi mackerel (called saba at sushi restaurants) is always pickled or cured in some fashion because it is dangerous to eat fresh – within 48 hours of death, the mackerel develops a bizarre form of food poisoning called “Scombroid food poisoning”.  Unlike most food poisoning, the culprit is not bacteria or parasites, but a simple chemical process brought about by exposure to oxygen.  Basically, the fish becomes saturated with histamines, which in turn causes a severe allergic reaction in whatever consumes it.  What kind of allergic reaction?  Well, all of them.  The poor schmuck that ate it gets flushed, itchy, nauseated, headachy, stuffy, the works — pretty much every reaction you’ve ever had to ragweed or a cat or wool or whatever, but all together at once.  Weird, right?

Don’t worry.  Fishermen know this and know that their jobs are fucked if they try and sell old fish, so mackerel fishermen take their catch directly to a curing plant that usually has the buggers either frozen or salted and/or otherwise cured within 24 hours.  But it also means that you shouldn’t buy fresh mackerel unless you’re walking your butt straight home and then cooking it before you even take your jacket off.

That’s okay with me, because I love that sushi mackerel is essentially pickled.  It’s oily, vinegary (the cheap stuff is really vinegary, which I don’t mind, honestly) and salty but clean at the same time, like if sardines weren’t fishy-tasting.

And that brings us to shiso, the mint-family herb also known as perilla, Beefsteak and Japanese basil.  The flavor is quite a challenge to describe, but putting it somewhere between mint and basil is a safe start.  Instead of the skunky pepperiness of basil, though, it has a high, reedy topnote of flavor, a sweetness that is both floral and spicy.  To be perfectly frank, I think it’s fucking amazing.

Paired with anything at all oily or rich, it’s an epiphany.   Which brings us back to mackerel.

Oh, mackerel and shiso.  I think you’re on the shortlist for my deathbed food.