You can prepare grilled, baked, crazy water. It also becomes an ingredient in excellent tartare and fish ragù. Too often branded as "poor", it is actually one of the best fish of our seas, all to be rediscovered
Normally the "tuna of the poor". And, savoring its flesh, it is not difficult to understand why. We are talking about the bonito, new stage in our journey among the fish to rediscover, which has already touched good and cheap delights like the chestnut fish, the boce and the horse mackerel.
Love the deep waters
Small tuna already in appearance: bonito (scientific name, Sardinian Sardinian) is a blue fish with an elongated appearance, whose dimensions vary between 50 and 70 cm and a weight of up to 10 kg. In addition to its size, it is distinguished from the striated skunk by its oblique dorsal lines; while, compared to the yellowfin tuna, it has much shorter dorsal fins. Bonito is a very common fish in our seas, although it prefers i seabed and only rarely moves to the coasts to hunt. It moves into shoals and, like tuna, is caught in fixed or flying tuna boats, or with the trawl nets or with those deriving said precisely "palamitare". For amateur fishermen it is certainly one of the most sought after prey: the periods in which the bonito is caught most frequently are the summer ones, including the month of September.
How to clean it
There freshness is recognized by hard meats to the touch and the red color of the gills. The best are those that weigh 3-4 kg. There cleaning It's simple: with a knife you make a clean cut on the stomach and remove the entrails. Then rinse the inside of the fish with tap water. At this point it is possible to derive some slices, simply cutting the fish into slices without removing the skin. Store in the refrigerator for a maximum of 2 days.
Ligurian style
In the kitchen it is an absolutely versatile ingredient. The easiest and most immediate preparation is made up of grated bonito slices: the fish is simply cut into slices about 3 cm thick and cooked on the grill or on the grill, with a subsequent dressing based on extra virgin olive oil, lemon and parsley. The important is do not overdo it with cooking, to prevent the meat from drying out too much. In Liguria the bonito slices are usually left marinate for 3 hours in a compound based on extra virgin olive oil, lemon, garlic, oregano and hot pepper, which will then be reused as a condiment after the slices have been grilled.
In Sicily
Excellent bonito baked with cherry tomatoes, in which the whole blue fish is seasoned with lemon, extra virgin olive oil, cherry tomatoes, garlic, salt and pepper. And then crumpled and baked in the oven for about 20 minutes. from Sicily comes the recipe of baked bonito, for which this time we resort to breading. In this case we work on fillets, which are breaded with a mixture of breadcrumbs, parsley, lemon, thyme, salt and pepper, and as usual with extra virgin olive oil to act as "glue" on the fillets.
Campania, Calabria and Tuscany
In Campania, instead, we usually prefer bonito to thecrazy watera, with the same valid recipe for sea bream, sea bass and sea bass: it is cooked in a whole pan, in slices or fillets, with cherry tomatoes, extra virgin olive oil, garlic, white wine, salt and pepper. The recipe is sometimes enriched with olives and capers. Particular preparation Calabrian, where the magnet is seasoned with a tomato sauce enriched with peas and chilli. Returning to Campania, there is even a bonito alla scapece. In Tuscany, the palamita alla gigliese provides for the boiling of fish, cut into slices, with lemon, a rancia and celery. The bonito is left for an hour under vinegar and then seasoned with bay leaves, rosemary, garlic and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. Among the latter, the are also noted skewers of breaded bonito.
Try it raw
For a true triumph of sea flavors, to recommend – obviously only with fresh and high quality products, following all the necessary precautions – the bonito tartare: after being carefully peeled and cleaned of bones, mince the pulp seasoning it with salt and extra virgin olive oil. Once left to rest in the refrigerator for a quarter of an hour, it is then seasoned with a compound based on pickled onions, honey and lemon juice.
In pasta it is a triumph
And the first ones? They are also there, all right: i spaghetti with grilled eggplant cream and bonito, enriched with cherry tomatoes, basil, pistachio and lemon, are a guarantee. There is also short pasta, with i paccheri with bonito sauce, prepared with cherry tomatoes, capers, olives and white wine. Another recipe Sicilian, i spaghetti with bonito "stufatu", sea sauce in which they also appear pine nuts, raisins, mint, chilli and wild fennel, besides the very Sicilian bread crumb ("muddica atturrata"). But bonito, like tuna, can look good in salads, and finish it too in oil to be enjoyed throughout the year. Finally, a curiosity: the dried flakes of the bonito are the basic food of the "dashi”, The Japanese broth.
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