Chapter 311 - 205: Missing Childhood

Chapter 311: Chapter 205: Missing Childhood

After the first cutlassfish was prepped, Erica wanted to skewer it on a branch and grill it right away, but Lin Chen immediately stopped her.

"Hold on, we’re not done yet."

"What do you mean, ’not done’? Didn’t I already prep it?"

"Do you want to eat it with bones or without?"

"Is that even a question? Of course I want... Wait, you mean you can take out the bones too!?"

"Right," Lin Chen nodded, pointing at the cross-section of the cutlassfish’s neck. "See the backbone? Just slice with the knife flat against it, all the way down. It’s the same as filleting any other fish."

Cutlassfish only have two rows of bones: one along the back and the other being the spinal column. This means there are no extra small bones around the spine, so once you remove the backbone, all that’s left is pure meat.

Erica knew this common filleting method. She quickly sliced off the two long strips of meat from either side of the cutlassfish, then trimmed off the few soft bones from the belly area.

"There are a few ways to skewer it, too. There’s the S-curve method, one where you cut it into chunks and stack them, and another where you slice it and roll it up."

"Let’s try them all! Different shapes probably taste different when they’re grilled, right?"

"Exactly! It seems you really have a knack for things when it comes to food."

"Of course~!"

Erica lifted her chin and grunted smugly, picking up the second cutlassfish to get started.

"Stop!"

"What is it now?"

"What I just taught you was the method that leaves the dorsal bones in. Now I’m going to teach you a method to remove the dorsal bones directly."

"Huh?? You can remove bones that are so fine?"

Just earlier, when she had been filleting the cutlassfish, she had specifically felt the bones on the fish’s back. They were indeed fine and soft, and they didn’t seem like something that could be easily dealt with.

’I can’t believe Lin says there’s a way to remove them directly?!’

"You can, and it’s very simple."

He used his fingernail to mark a line on the fish’s back, close to the dorsal fin. "Make a light incision here, just enough to break the skin. Don’t cut too deep, or you’ll sever the bones. Do it on both sides."

"After you’ve made the incision from head to tail, angle the tip of your knife down, with the spine of the blade close to the fin. Cut inward at an angle like this. It’s the same principle as deboning by sliding the knife along the bone."

After hearing his description, Erica’s eyes lit up. She instantly understood what he meant. Her sharp combat knife quickly scored a line along the cutlassfish’s back, then sliced in at an angle. She then flipped the fish over and repeated the same steps.

Once the cuts were made, she just had to grab the fin and pull it out gently, and all the small dorsal bones came out with it, roots and all.

Without needing any further instruction from Lin Chen, she naturally deboned the fish as well.

"I didn’t expect preparing cutlassfish to be so easy. Few bones and lots of meat. It’s a good fish."

A single cutlassfish yielded about a pound of pure meat after being processed. Both of them were starving, so they had no intention of saving any. They skewered all of it on branches, ready to eat it in one go.

Erica had already learned how to grill fish, so he didn’t need to worry too much, just keep an eye on her from time to time.

Having rested for over half an hour, he had finally regained some strength. He could hold things again, but he just couldn’t exert much force.

While Erica was grilling the cutlassfish, he took the red sea bream, which had already been scaled, out of the bamboo basket and placed it on a banana leaf.

When the small combat knife was in his hands, it felt completely different, as if the blade were an extension of his own body. The fluid, graceful movements as he portioned the fish fillets stood in stark contrast to Erica’s relatively clumsy knife work.

Within a few short seconds, two whole fillets were sliced off. He then removed the long bones from the belly area and cut away the entire belly strip. What remained were two translucent, pure fish fillets.

He skewered the two belly strips on a branch and handed them to Erica to grill along with the others. Lin Chen himself used chopsticks to hold a fillet over the fire, waving it back and forth a few times to let the high heat curl the skin.

Then, he sliced the fillet in half along a fine, textured line running down the middle, separating it into the back and upper belly sections.

The back portion was larger, leaner, and had a firmer texture, making it suitable for slicing diagonally into thin pieces.

The upper belly, being closer to the main belly, was softer and contained a fair amount of fat. It was only half the size of the back portion and was best cut into small chunks about half a finger thick.

He arranged all the sashimi pieces into a platter according to their different shapes. Then, he chopped some fresh Keyoute cilantro, mixed it with shredded fragrant leaves, and piled it to the side. A delicate wilderness red sea bream sashimi platter was now complete.

As Lin Chen sliced the fish, Erica realized what he was making, and her mouth began to water uncontrollably.

When the final product was presented before her, her eyes were glued to it, and she couldn’t stop gulping.

Japanese cuisine is arguably the most famous Asian cuisine in North America. All-you-can-eat Japanese restaurants, in particular, are everywhere.

The region’s abundant seafood resources, coupled with countless varieties of salmon and the presence of tuna, make it especially suitable for the development of Japanese cuisine.

But in reality, all the all-you-can-eat Japanese restaurants are opened by Great Xia bosses. Only Da Xia People are capable of building restaurant chain businesses to such a scale and standard.

Authentic Japanese dining is usually found in izakayas, dedicated sushi shops, or omakase restaurants.

In Japanese cuisine, "sushi" refers to sushi with raw fish—a piece of sashimi or seared fish placed on top of vinegared rice.

Those colorful sushi rolls and all sorts of other fancy varieties are new creations developed by Great Xia chefs; they have nothing to do with authentic Japanese cuisine.

Of course, over time, even orthodox Japanese restaurants have absorbed some of these creative ideas and started making sushi rolls and the like. However, they don’t take it to such an extreme; their focus is typically on various types of sashimi as the main ingredient, without adding too many supplementary ones.