Fried ── Fried dishes
Satsuma-age
sweet fried fish cake
Fish paste mixed with tofu and sugar and fried, a Kagoshima fish cake known locally as tsuke-age. One account credits lord Nariakira Shimazu with frying it for better keeping quality; another traces it to Ryukyuan cooking.
Lineage
What it's made of
Fish paste mixed with tofu, local sake, and sugar is shaped and fried slowly in oil. The surface turns golden, and a springy bite gives way to a faint sweetness underneath. Finishing it sweeter than similar fish cakes elsewhere is said to be distinctly Kagoshima, and it's enjoyed either as is or reheated over a flame.
How it's made
Paste from horse mackerel, mackerel, or flying fish is kneaded with drained firm tofu, local sake, sugar, and sweet-potato starch, shaped into bars or blocks, and fried slowly at around 160°C. Adding tofu is said to give it a soft, airy texture, and sweetening it with sugar is what sets it apart from similar fried fish cakes elsewhere in Japan.
Why it took this shape
One account holds that in the Edo period, the Satsuma domain's lord Nariakira Shimazu, inspired by hanpen and kamaboko from Kishu, turned it into a fried food to improve its keeping quality in Kagoshima's hot, humid climate. Another traces the name tsuke-age to a corruption of chiki-agi, a fried fish cake from Ryukyuan cooking — either way, contact with other domains and Ryukyu is thought to underlie the flavor.
Before you go
Dishes in the same style
- Agemaki Yuba no NimonoFresh yuba sheets are layered, rolled into a log, sliced into rounds, and deep-fried before a slow simmer in a light broth — a Nikko dish built on the region's rippled yuba-making craft, served at New Year's and celebrations.
- Aji FryFilleted horse mackerel breaded in panko and fried. Chiba prefecture holds some of the richest mackerel fishing grounds in Japan, and frying is thought to have taken root as a quick way to eat regional brands like the oily 'golden aji' fresh.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Related lineage
- Jako-tenWhole small-fish paste, bones included, fried into an oval cake, an Ehime specialty. Said to trace to Uwajima's first domain lord bringing a kamaboko craftsman from Sendai, its name reflecting a habit of using odd, mixed catch fish without waste.
- GansuFish paste coated in panko and fried, a Kure, Hiroshima specialty. Said to have been devised in the postwar 1940s as a way to use leftover fish paste from kamaboko production, an unusual pairing of fried fish cake and cutlet-style crumb.