#sansho

We harvested abundant sansho pepper this spring! Amazing! The sansho tree produced only about 20 of peppercorns last year, and I was hoping to get just a little bit more this year. But I wasn't expecting THIS!!

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https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanthoxylum_piperitum

Français : sansho, poivre sansho English : Japanese pepper, Japanese prickly-ash 日本語 : 山椒、さんしょう

Famille : Rutaceae Genre : Zanthoxylum Espèce : Zanthoxylum piperitum

Malgré son nom, le sansho n’est pas un poivre mais un agrume. Il pique comme un piment et brûle comme du poivre, ceci dit. Le manger frais est une mauvaise idée, mais en poudre il fait un bon condiment.

J’en ai ramassé 200g dans la forêt mi-juin, mais j’ai pas encore cueilli ceux qui sont tout autour de la maison !

J’ai fait sécher les fruits, puis je les ai broyés en poudre.

Grilled greater amberjack with miso glaze flavored with ground sansho pepper leaves.

Around here, in June and July, young greater amberjack are found almost everywhere near the coast. They are so hungry that even beginner anglers can catch them easily. And this fish is quite a fighter. Catching them is so much fun!

But I’m not too crazy about eating this as sashimi (sliced raw fish) all the time. I want to try something new. So today, I tried grilling it with miso glaze.

And the twist I gave was flavoring the miso glaze with ground sansho pepper leaves! 

I planted this sansho pepper tree more than ten years ago. They said this was the type that bears fruit and I was so excited about that. But for some reason, it never produced fruit at all and I was so disappointed. And this year... Look what I found! This was the one and only fruit on the entire tree but I’m really happy. At least they didn’t lie to me, huh?

You need to grill the fish until it’s half done. (I left the skin on one of them to see if that would make any difference in the taste.)

Then you put the glaze on and grill just until the surface is nicely browned with the green color of the sansho pepper leaves remaining.

Well, it wasn’t bad. But I made the glaze too sweet. And though the one with the skin looked better, the skinless one tasted better.

I might try this again but probably I won’t call this my favorite dish...