Steve and I had the good fortune to live in Tokyo for six months a few years back, where one of the many eye-opening experiences included an abbreviated sushi course at the prestigious professional Sushi Daigaku school. This introduction to the exactingly precise methods of preparing the perfect sushi rice, fish, and tradition-bound assembly techniques has proven invaluable. Our home made sushi recipes make for thrilling participatory dinner parties.
Saying our time in Tokyo was a few years back might be stretching it a bit… A the time, Hirohito still sat upon the Chrysanthemum Throne. Yes, that Hirohito. But in these later years His Majesty the Emperor's passion was harmlessly mucking about in the extensive waterways well hidden behind the forbidding Imperial Palace walls conducting marine biology research. But then again our Tokyo time was decades after Liberace introduced tuna sashmi in Liberace Cooks! (click for recipe)
Everyone knows the freshest, most pristine fish is essential for top-notch sushi. What is less known is the crucial importance of proper rice preparation. Professional apprentices spend years perfecting their technique. The ideal sushi rice is glossy, a bit chewy, and subtly seasoned. Easier recipes for sushi rice abound; we honor our teachers and follow the more elaborate Daigaku sushi rice recipe.
You will want a proper wooden tub, rounded spatula and rolling mat — here's a good starter kit: Sushi Making Set Kit
Don't be daunted. Home made sushi is delicious. No one expects a home cook to replicate the work of the masters. With an array of the freshest fish possible (easy for us out on eastern Long Island) and a selection of other fillings such as avocado slices, cucumbers, pickled radish and the sweetened omlette Tomago, you simply lay out all the ingredients with the still-warm rice, a supply of nori (sheets of toasted seaweed), gari (pickled ginger) and real Japanese wasabi and let everyone create their own masterpieces.
Our young friend Moses Bone and his pals took charge of the fan-cooling and seasoning phase of the rice preparation. Meanwhile we retrieved our trove of tools and tableware collected all those years ago in Tokyo and had ourselves a grand time. (Take a close look at those sexy sake cups…)
Tuna belly, sea bass, squid, salmon, avocado, tomago, pickled daikon and mint were sliced into hand-roll sized pieces. Pastel soy-based wrappers added color and taste contrast to the traditional seaweed nori sheets. The extra effort it took to procure true wasabi was well worth it.
BONUS INFO: Here's some sushi etiquette acquired in the finest establishments in Tokyo:
1. In Japan, it is polite to serve your partner. Your pour your partner's glass and keep it filled, whether beer, sake, diet coke, what have you, and they do the same for your. Same applies to the soy sauce dipping dish. You pour soy sauce into your partner's dish; they pour into yours.
2. Don't fill up that soy dipping dish! A thin layer only. If there's a design or decorative element on the bottom, do not obscure it.
3. Nigiri-sushi already has a swath of wasabi between the fish and the rice, so do not mix wasabi into the soy at the outset. The wasabi-soy combo is for sashimi. While adding more wasabi to the dish is not a horrid faux pas, it is akin to salting food in a fine restaurant before tasting. A true sushi master has carefully applied just the right amount of wasabi to feature the taste of the fish.
4. Eat sashimi with chopsticks. Hand-rolls (duh) and Nigiri sushi are properly eaten with the fingers. Cut rolls go either way, fingers or chopsticks.
5. Dip the fish into the soy, not the rice, which you already know falls apart when dunked. Pick up a piece of Nigiri using your thumb and middle finger, tucking your index finger down onto the fish so it doesn't fall off the rice. Now you can flip the piece over and slide the fish across the soy sauce. A thin slice of pickled ginger can be secured onto the fish by that index finger.
6. Pickled ginger is a garnish, not a side salad.
7. Real wasabi is a fickle root that grows in cold mountain streams. Hard to cultivate. The best sushi bars will have a whole wasabi root on hand and grate it right onto your plate. Here in the US, look for real Japanese wasabi paste in tubes. The powdered cans are often times colored hot mustard.
8. Sweet freshwater shrimp are kept live until serving time. Which means the little tails may still be flapping when served. Try to hide any horror you may feel. If you choose not to eat the tails raw, you may ask the chef if he will flash-fry them for a crisp little bite.
9. Rubbing disposable chopsticks together to remove errant splinters is recessary only when they are of very low quality, which is often the case. Better restaurants have chopsticks are nicely sanded and splinter-free. It's an insult to rub these together. So check your chopsticks out before you rub them. Would you wipe down the silver at a four-star restaurant? I thought not.
10. Knowing the Japanese names of fish puts you on good terms with the sushi chef if you sit at the bar. Here are my favorites, which pack the strongest flavor punch. These are general terms, the better the sushi bar, the more descriptive the varieties will be:
Maguro -regular tuna
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O'Toro – very very fatty tuna belly
Hamachi – yellowtail
Uni – sea urchin roe
Saba – mackerel
Tomago – sweet egg omlette
Unagi – eel
Sake – salmon
Ebi – shrimp (cooked)
Ama-Ebi – sweet shrimp (raw)
Fugu – blowfish (this is the one with the extremely toxic liver; chefs serving it need a special certification)
Ikura – salmon roe
Ika – squid
Kani – crab
Tako – octopus (cooked)
Tobiko – flying fish roe