Unadon (うな丼, grilled eel over rice)

Unadon carries a little fear with it, because eel sounds like a specialist's animal and, in Japan, it is. Let me be plain: the hard work belongs to the fishmonger. Ask for freshwater eel already split, boned, and cleaned, and the home cook's work is rice, tare, and patient heat.

Unagi has two clocks: the custom of eating it in midsummer on Doyō no Ushi no Hi, and the older cook's sense that wild eel grows fattest as the water cools. Farmed eel has made it a year-round shop dish, but the rule underneath is unchanged: buy the best eel you can, and don't ask tare to do the fish's work. It should look glistening fresh, smell clean, and feel firm. If it looks tired, change the meal. Nothing hidden under a sweet sauce ever becomes honmono.

The one detail that decides the dish is the second grill. First you grill the eel plain to set the flesh, then steam it in Kantō fashion until tender, then grill again while brushing on tare, the soy, mirin, sugar, and sake glaze. The sauce is not meant to bury the eel. It should tighten into a thin lacquer, shining on the ridges, while the rice underneath stays hot enough to catch what runs down.

Unadon is a donburi, a bowl meal, but not a careless one. Keep the rice level low, lay the eel neatly, add a little tare, and finish with sanshō if you like its green bite. Leave it room. The bowl should feel generous in the hand, not defeated by its own abundance.