The offcuts from making sashimi, and the meat scraped from along the bone. Nobody throws that away, and nobody can put it in front of a guest either. Here it gets coated in okara, the pulp left behind when soy milk is pressed out of the beans.

In the dialect of Usuki, okara is kirasu and to coat something is mamesu. The name is simply those two words set next to each other. It is said to have been worked out in the middle of the Edo period, when the domain's finances were in trouble and somebody had to make a small amount of fish look like more.

Okara is what is left when soy milk has been pressed out, and on its own it is dry and faintly sweet and tastes of almost nothing. Yellowtail or horse mackerel is marinated briefly in soy sauce and then rolled through it. The volume doubles and a handful of scraps becomes a portion. At the end a kabosu is squeezed over the whole thing, and at that moment it stops smelling like an economy measure.

The trick was designed to stretch something. Nobody needs it stretched now, and the dish has stayed exactly as it was — the same offcuts, the same pulp, the same squeeze of citrus. The thrift has outlived the poverty that produced it and turned into a flavour people ask for by name.