This is an appropriate recipe for the first blog I’m writing after my trip to Australia (and a bit of Thailand), as this was inspired by a dish I had in restaurant Rebel Rebel in Canberra during the Australian wine tour in 2023. Kingfish (also known as Yellowtail or Hamachi) is a flavorful fish that is very good when it’s raw (which is why it is used often for sushi and sashimi). Here it is combined with a fennel salad and orange (at Rebel Rebel it was blood orange), marinated anchovies (called boquerones in Spanish, I shared the recipe for making them at home recently), and garnished with sumac. Sumac is the dried and crushed sour fruits from a shrub of the same name, popular as a spice in the Middle East. It does not only provide a nice tart flavor to the dish, but also a dramatic color. With this introduction you can probably figure out how to make this dish yourself, but here is a recipe anyway.

Ingredients

For 4 serving as an appetizer

• 200 grams (7 oz) raw sushi-grade kingfish (yellowtail, hamachi) without skin
• 12 marinated anchovies (or sardine strips) from this recipe, drained
• 1 fennel bulb
• 4 or 8 ‘supremed’ orange sections, juice reserved
• good extra virgin olive oil
• salt
• sumac

Instructions

Slice the kingfish and seaseon the slices of kingfish with salt on both sides. Allow the fish to cure in the salt in the refrigerator for at least one hour.

Peel an orange, removing all the white pith, and then slice the segments from between the membranes. The skinless orange segments you obtain in that way are called supremes. Catch the orange juice that will drip from the orange during this process for the dressing. Reserve the orange sections and juice in a bowl. Use only the soft ‘leaves’ of the fennel and slice in thin strips against the grain. Place the fennel slices in cold water (with ice cubes if the water is not already cold) and refrigerate for at least an hour to allow the fennel to crisp up. This can all be done in advance.

To serve, drain the orange sections and reserve the juice.

Drain the fennel, pat it dry with paper towels, and dress the fennel with good extra virgin olive oil, salt, and the orange juice. Toss to mix and taste to adjust the dressing if needed.

Start by arranging a layer of fennel on each plate, followed by a layer of kingfish.

Arrange the orange sections and boquerones on top, then sprinkle generously with sumac. You could also add the orange last, to avoid getting sumac on the orange. Serve at once. The dish should not be served directly from the refrigerator, but it should be slightly cooler than room temperature.

Wine pairing

This is not an easy dish to pair wine with because of the sweetness of the orange. At wine pairing dinners at my house we tried the dish with the following wines:

• Ceraudo Grisara 2023, Pecorello, Calabria, Italy: very good pairing, but the wine is slightly too fresh for the dish
• Ippolito 1845 Pecorello 2023, Calabria Italy: excellent pairing (same grape variety as the previous wine, but with lower acidity)
• Markus Molitor Kinheimer Hubertslay Auslese** 2017, Riesling, Mosel, Germany: very good pairing, but the wine slightly overpowers the dish
• Shaw + Smith M3 Chardonnay 2022, Adelaide Hills, Australia: not a good pairing, because the wine become bitter with the dish
• Terrazas de los Andes Chardonnay 2022, Tupungato, Mendoza, Argentina: excellent pairing
• Penfolds Max’s Chardonnay 2023, Adelaide Hills, Australia: very good pairing, but the wine does get a bit bitter with the orange

So the best pairings were medium bodied, somewhat fruity, and not too much acidity.