Cuisine of Japan (Sushi)

Part I, Sushi:

Sushi is the vinegared rice, not the fish as we've come to term it. The fish, usually served raw, is sashimi. The climate and geography of island Japan facilitates the growing of rice and the use of seafood, both fish and invertebrates.

"Sushi began centuries ago in Japan as a method of preserving fish. It is told that the origins of sushi came from countries of Southeastern Asia. Cleaned, raw fish were pressed between layers of salt and weighted with a stone. After a few weeks, the stone was removed and replaced with a light cover, and a few months after that, the fermented fish and rice were considered ready to eat. Some restaurants in Tokyo still serve this original style of sushi, called narezushi made with freshwater carp. Its flavor is so strong that it obscures the fish's identity altogether, and narezushi is something of an acquired taste."

"In Osaka there is still an elaborate tradition of sushi pressed with rice in wooden boxes, although it isn't preserved for weeks at a time. This type of sushi is called hako-zushi, or oshi-zushi".

In the early 1800's Hanaya Yohei, a chef, began to serve raw fish combined with vinegared rice, and sushi as we know it was born.

The most common form of sushi today in the West is nigiri-sushi, rolled balls of rice with seafood laid out atop, often with a dab of wasabi between the rice and the fish. Originally, this form of sushi was named Edo-mae, for Edo (Tokyo), its place of development. It was one of the two types of sushi developed as an outgrowth of Yohei's experimentations. The other is Kansai style, emerging from the city of Osaka. This type consists of seasoned rice mixed with various ingredients and formed into decorative shapes.

The elaborate combination rolls now popular in the West are not traditionally Japanese, with the exception of futo-maki. Japanese sushi chefs, and some purists, believe that mixing too many items at once deletes the experience of sushi. Futo-maki in Japan, by the way, consists of egg omelette, spinach, kampyo (gourd), gobo (burdock root), mushroom, and a special sweet pink codfish powder called oborro or sakura-denbu. Otherwise, rolls are usually just one fish, such as tuna; or vegetables, such as pickled vegetables, pickled daikon radish, cucumber, or various other vegetables, in rice rolled in a sheet of seaweed.

Master sushi chefs are called shokunin, a term used for many areas of craft endeavors, and indicate that the master went through many years of training, typically about ten. Often, a future shokunin would spend the first couple of years just sweeping and cleaning up, before handling the knife. Speaking of the knives, these are very sharp specialty knives, each one extremely valuable; indeed, some shokunin are known to sleep with their knives, to keep them safe. (The knives, not the shokunin.) Presentation is all-important to the Japanese.

Some typical sushi served in Japan: The white fish (shiromi) include halibut, flounder, sea bass, tilapia, swordfish, blowfish (Fugu, the one where the liver is poisonous, so an improperly cut fish can kill), and striped mackerel. Silvery fish (hikari-mono) include yellowtail, mackerel, Spanish mackerel, horse mackerel, sardines, trout and catfish. (The latter are not served in the West; freshwater fish can be problematic health-wise.) The darker fish (akami) include tuna (bluefin, yellowfin, albacore), salmon, sturgeon (cooked, only), bonito, whale, and the liver of monkfish. Then, there's eel, of which two kinds are served (freshwater or sea), typically with a dark sauce, and always broiled. Fish roe is often used: Tobiko (flying fish roe), which is also used as a garnish; Masago (smelt eggs), used like the Tobiko; salmon eggs, cod roe, herring roe. Shellfish and mollusks include a couple varieties of shrimp (the sweet shrimp, ama-ebi, is typically served with the head on the side, batter-fried), squid (raw), octopus (cooked), various clams, scallops, abalone. And then there is Uni (sea urchin gonads), which some find an acquired taste.

Chirashi is raw and cooked fish served on a bed of vinegared rice. Nine is considered a lucky number, so often there will be nine types of fish.

As far as wasabi goes, the type usually served in the West is colored horseradish, and it approximates the taste of the true wasabi plant. Wasabi (Wasabia japonica syn. Eutrema japonica) is a vegetable that needs intensive cultivation, thereby making it very pricy. It is a hot spice, but unlike peppers, the taste doesn't linger, or malinger. It is a perennial, requiring two years of growth before it can be harvested for its rhizome, the part used as the condiment.

Sources:

Sushi a la Carte

The Sushi Chronicles

Sushi

Cultural Savvy

Fresh Wasabi

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