Miso-Marinated Black Cod
Chef Nobu Matsuhisa first served miso-marinated black cod in the late 1980s at Matsuhisa, his original Southern California restaurant. Since then, he’s opened 21 restaurants in the U.S., plus locations around the world, and restaurant chefs have put endless versions of this dish on their menus. When he published the recipe in Nobu, the Cookbook (2001), the dish quickly entered the lexicon of home cooks as evidenced by a quick Google search, which yields 500,000+ results for "miso-marinated black cod."
And never mind the fact that the “black cod” called for in this recipe isn’t actually a species from the cod family: it’s a sablefish (also known as butterfish). Despite the seemingly overwhelming popularity of this recipe, sablefish remains a sustainable choice because the fisheries are so well-managed. Black cod landed in the San Francisco Bay Area are caught with pots that trap the fish where it lives in deep water, which means there is little by-catch and no negative impact on the environment. The black cod fishery traditionally used long lines with baited hooks along the sea bottom, but sperm whales and orcas grew adept at pilfering the lines as they were pulled to the surface, so pots were implemented in 2015.
We’ve adapted this recipe from the original by reducing the amount of sugar and the marinating time (Nobu calls for marinating the fish for two to three days). We like to serve this with steamed bok choy tossed with a bit of sesame oil, but any steamed hearty green—beet greens, chard, kale, turnip greens—will do.
[tasty-recipe id="3450"]
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