Saba from Skala Oropou, line-caught, 2.4 kg

A single mackerel came off the day boats at Skala Oropou on Friday at two point four kilos, which is large for the Euboean Gulf and large enough to change what we did with it.

Saba is the fish people think they do not like, usually because they have only met it tired. Mackerel oxidises faster than almost anything else on the counter; a fish that was superb at four in the afternoon is merely acceptable by nine. This is why it sits where it does in the sequence, in the brief course before the nigiri run, and why we will not serve it on the second seating if the first one has taken the best of it.

At two point four kilos the fillets were thick enough to take a longer salt than usual — fifty minutes rather than the thirty we give a kilo fish — and then twenty minutes in vinegar rather than fifteen. The skin came away in one piece, which it does when the fish has been handled well on the boat and badly almost never otherwise.

Hiroshi scored the skin and gave it eight seconds under the binchotan, not to cook it but to soften the silver membrane so it releases against the tongue instead of resisting it. That is the whole trick, and it takes about a decade to learn to do it without thinking.

It fed both seatings on Friday and one on Saturday. There was none left for Sunday, which is correct.