あじの梅じそ揚げ

So for a while my Japanese cooking thing went into a halt, probably because I had been lazy, and trying to save some money by eating some instant food (e.g. なっとう、くらげ) with rice. As much as I love natto et al., I can't eat that for a week straight. For sometime I ate at the cafeteria as often as possible, but then I got bored of the crappy food there (the unagi rice a couple of weeks ago was pretty good though).

Anyway, today I got back to cooking, and I made あじの梅じそ揚げ. Aji is Japanese for horse mackerel. The dish is basically pieces of aji and bits of ume-boshi (pickled plum) wrapped inside an しそ（大葉; shiso）leaf, and then coated with flour, egg and breadcrumbs and fried.

It looked tasty in the recipe book, and I happen to like fish, umeboshi and shiso so I thought I'd give it a go. It tasted okay, perhaps a little bit more umeboshi would have made it better? But the process was a pain in the ass.

At the supermarket I couldn't find ready-to-cook horse mackerel fillets. So I bought two fish - actual fish, that needs filleting. That took me almost an hour! and I had to wash my hands a dozen times 'cause they stank of fishiness...and the chopping board was covered in the fish's internal organs and blood and roe etc. Ugh.

As much as I liked the dish, not going to make it again. Never again.