KO EN Taiwanese Appetizer⏱ 18 minEdit history

Wuyuzi (Seared Dried Mullet Roe with Garlic Leaves and Daikon)

Name: Wuyuzi (Seared Dried Mullet Roe with Garlic Leaves and Daikon)
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 3 min
Total time: 18 min
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: Taiwanese
Ingredients: 1 wuyuzi (dried mullet roe); 3 tbsp kaoliang (sorghum liquor); 150 g daikon; 1 stalk green garlic; 0.5 apple

Taiwan's salt-cured, dried mullet roe, seared on the outside with sorghum liquor, sliced thin and eaten in one bite with raw daikon and green garlic leaf. The salt and the wind have already done the cooking. The heat is there only to melt the fat at the surface and bring up its smell, and heated through it turns hard and bitter. A slice of daikon dilutes the salt one mouthful at a time.

Ingredients

4servings

wuyuzi (dried mullet roe) · about 150g, from a Taiwanese grocer or online1
kaoliang (sorghum liquor) · or another high-proof spirit3 tbsp
daikon150 g
green garlic · or the white of a spring onion1 stalk
apple · optional0.5

Steps

Soak the roe in 2 tbsp of the liquor for 5 minutes; the thin outer membrane swells and lifts. Peel it off with your fingertips.
⏲ 5 min
Meanwhile slice the daikon 2mm thick and cut it to the size of a roe slice, and cut the green garlic on the diagonal. If using apple, slice it thin and keep it with the daikon.
Heat a dry pan over low heat. Brush the roe with the rest of the liquor and sear it 30-40 seconds a side. Turn it when small bubbles rise on the surface and the edges pale slightly. The middle has to stay soft and glossy.
⏲ 1 min 20 sec
Rest it on the board for 1 minute, then slice it 3mm thick on the diagonal. Cut hot, the fat smears the knife and the slices crumble.
⏲ 1 min
Lay a slice of roe and some garlic leaf on a slice of daikon and eat it in one bite. The roe on its own is too salty.

Tips & Variations

Variations

Over a flame: in Taiwan the liquor-brushed roe is often held in tongs over a flame, or seared over liquor set alight in a dish. Faster than a pan and more aromatic, but easier to scorch. The moment it bubbles, it is done.
Curing your own: if you can get fresh mullet roe sacs, run the back of a knife along the surface veins to push the blood out, bury the sacs in salt for a few hours, rinse, press flat between boards overnight, then dry them in cold, dry wind for about a week, turning them daily. Winter, when the mullet run to Taiwan's south-west coast, is the season. Like gotgam it needs cold dry wind, so it cannot be done just anywhere.
In fried rice: chopped fine and stirred into fried rice at the very end. Here too the heat goes off straight away — stir-fried longer, the grains of roe harden.
Same roe, other names: ko.wikipedia says wuyuzi is similar to Korean eoran, Japanese karasumi and Italian bottarga. In Italy it is grated over pasta rather than seared and sliced, which uses no heat at all.

Tips

The cooking is already done. As salt and seasoning puts it, "Raise the salt concentration at the surface of an ingredient and water flows out of its cells". The salt drew the water out of the roe and the wind dried the rest. So the heat is not there to cook it, only to melt the fat at the surface for gloss and a toasted smell. Heated through, the roe turns hard and bitter.
The liquor takes the fishy note off. Mooncake soaks its salted yolks in the same liquor, and says why: "This is what takes the fishy note off them; baked straight, that smell stays in the paste around them." With wuyuzi the liquor also softens the membrane so it peels.
Here a flame that heats only the surface is the point. Alcohol in cooking calls setting it alight wrong as a way to remove alcohol, because "What burns is the vapour at the surface; what is in the liquid stays there." Wuyuzi is not being flamed to remove anything. It needs heat that reaches the surface and stops, and burning vapour is that heat.
The daikon does the seasoning. Taramasalata handles a cured roe too, and there "the adjustment is made by diluting rather than by salting". Wuyuzi dilutes with raw daikon instead of bread, and one mouthful at a time rather than in the bowl. Slice the daikon too thin and it cannot do that job.
Sear and slice just before eating. Cut slices dry out and harden quickly. Wrap what is left whole and freeze it, then sear only as much as you need.