Kasube Nitsuke

Kasube is the Hokkaido word for skate. Being a cartilaginous fish, its bones are soft, which means the whole thing can be eaten, flesh and skeleton together. What you get is meat with something firm and crunchy running through it. The fish is most plentiful off the northern Sea of Japan coast of Hokkaido, around Soya and Rumoi.

The name has two explanations. Before anyone had worked out how to cook it, this fish, which generates ammonia inside its own body, was avoided. Boil it or grill it and all you had was kasu, dregs. Hence kasube. The other account traces the word to Ainu, to kashumbe.

The cooking answers the objection directly. Cut it into chunks and simmer with sugar, soy sauce, sake, and mirin. Ginger in the pot keeps the smell down.

It is a winter fish here, appearing in supermarkets when the cold comes. A fish named for being worthless comes to the table every winter.