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Jakoten (Fried Fish Cake Ground with Bones and Skin)

Name: Jakoten (Fried Fish Cake Ground with Bones and Skin)
Prep time: 40 min
Cook time: 15 min
Total time: 55 min
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: Japanese
Ingredients: 600 g small fish (horse mackerel, sardines and the like); 1 tsp salt; 2 tbsp potato starch; 50 g ice; 1 tsp sugar; 1 tbsp sake; 1 L oil for deep frying; 4 tbsp grated daikon; soy sauce

A fried fish cake from the southern coast of Ehime: small fish with only the heads and guts removed, ground with their bones and skin, shaped into flat cakes and fried, with a gritty bite.

Steps

Scale the fish, remove the heads and guts, rinse the cavities under running water and pat dry. Leave the bones and skin.
Cut the fish into chunks and grind them in a food processor with the salt and ice until fine. Work in several bursts until you cannot feel any coarse bone in the paste.
⏲ 5 min
Add the starch, sugar and sake and process again to a sticky paste.
⏲ 1 min
With wet hands, shape the paste into flat rectangles about 7-8cm by 5cm and a little over 1cm thick.
Fry in oil at 170°C until golden on both sides.
⏲ 4 min
Drain and serve hot with grated daikon and soy sauce.

Variations

Grilled. Already-fried jakoten is often warmed over a flame.
In oden. It goes into the oden pot too.
Tempura curry. A curry with jakoten in place of meat, added after the curry powder so it stays firm.
Jakoten katsu. Crumbed and fried a second time.

Tips

Grind it with the bones and skin. Only the heads and guts come out.
Grind it fine. Until no coarse bone is left.
A gritty bite is right. It is not after the spring of kamaboko.
Grind with ice. It keeps the paste from warming up.
Best straight from the oil. Once cold, warm it over a flame.

More detail and the reasons why (2)

Made from the fish kamaboko leaves behind. One account in Japanese Wikipedia says that around 1615 Date Hidemune brought kamaboko makers from Sendai, and jakoten began with the fish that could not be used for kamaboko. Where kamaboko picks white flesh and rinses it to draw out its spring, jakoten grinds small fish whole, minus heads and guts, bones and skin included. Wikipedia describes its texture as jarijari, gritty.
The best fish is the hotarujako. A small fish that the Nanyo region calls harambo. It is hard to find elsewhere, so use small fish such as horse mackerel, one of those Wikipedia lists as also going in.