Although most probably no one of you is going to believe me, yesterday I ate sushi for the first time in my whole life! I had a weird, innate aversion to anything which involved eating raw fish, which produced me horrible visions of gastroenteritis episodes and what not, and made me reject systematically even the mere suggestion of a visit to japanese fast-food chains like Yo! Sushi. But I decided that it was stupid to act like that and that I needed to stop this non-sense about hypocondriacal hallucinations, so I kind of obliged myself to taste it. And now I’m addicted to all things sushi.
We went to a little japanese restaurant round the corner – we had spotted it past week but we decided to surround to a nachos feast instead (which left me thinking about nachos for the rest of the week, by the way). It was nice and cosy, with lots of small garnments and details here and there with japanese characters, which are quite different compared to your nearest chinese restaurant (namely a waterfall painting and a big fishtank). The japanese ones remind me a lot to all the movies which mr.doob watches, for example the characters of Spirited Away (original title is “千と千尋の神隠し, Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi“), or simply Dragon Ball, to use a more popular example – there was a picture of a dragon like that one there.
I have always been attracted by the japanese culture, although not proactively enough, to describe it somehow. But since Shifter taught us how to create (korean) sushi rolls I became more curious about it all, and yesterday, after forcing myself to overcome my initial aversion to eat raw fish, I definitely decided that I have to learn more about sushi (that is, I want to cook sushi!).
Funnily enough, today a couple of office mates bought japanese food for lunch (which made me hate my humble sandwich for a while). And I realised there are two more japanese take-aways round my new office (apart from the one that I already spotted). Hmmm…
Next stop, the supreme japanese restaurant that trace knows – gotta fight round two versus the sticks! :)
(Picture titled “too pretty to eat” by celiece, taken from sxc.hu)
eurocero
I believe you. I’ve never eaten sushi in my life, and still have no plans of trying to overcome my fears.
r08028
you missed this ego! ;)
Jcl
raw fish = sashimi… sushi is the rice with the vinegar (sushi-meshi). It can have sashimi in it or not (giving different names to it depending on the type of fish and the way of compositing it :) ).
Calling sushi to “raw fish” is something pretty weird :-)
We had korean gim-bahp (which is pretty similar to japanese “futomaki” -a kind of makizushi-) at PMP, prepared by shifter… and that didn’t contain any kind of raw fish (nor it does in the japanese version usually, although it may).
I like sushi, and preparing it… but it gets pretty expensive (at least in my city) if you want to prepare it right, and with the right ingredients… I wouldn’t risk -any- raw fish… you need to have it really fresh. Also the sushi (the rice), and the rice vinegar (sushizu… best brand being “Koshihikari”) are expensive and can only be found on “delicatessen” places. You can always use any other rice, and prepare the vinegar at home (5 spoons of sugar, 5 and 1/4 of vinegar, and 2 to 4 spoons of salt), but it’ll never taste the same.
The vinegar rice is the most important part in any kind of preparation, and there’s absolutely nothing like the original… basically, raw fish tastes nothing (specially if you use soy sauce and wasabi), and only gives texture… rice and the nori (the external seaweed) is what gives it all the flavour and makes it yummy :-)
sole
Hah! mr.
“Sabelotodo”Know-it-all … I know that sushi is the rice but when I said I had aversion to eating raw fish, I wasn’t meaning it was the sushi :-|Also trace and me also participated in the korean gim-bahp: trace did some omelettes and I prepared the rice… kilos and kilos of rice! yay!
In any case as with any other food style, I like to experiment and adapt it to my own case… if there’s not one ingredient just try and replace it with other and see how it results. I think that’s the base (and the fun!) of cooking :D
(I also have a great faith in Chinatown and the big oriental community in London – with their Deli shops ;) … I hope they can provide me with great tasty ingredients, haha)
Jcl
Of course, changing the ingredients is what I do to make it less expensive… but it just doesn’t taste the same (and not as good :-) ). But this is Spain… and not only Spain, this is Murcia… I guess you’ll have access to cheap ingredients in london (and anyway, japanese food should not be that expensive there… there’s ONE japanese restaurant in my city, and it’s fucking expensive).
Btw, mr. “Know-it-all” is a perfectly valid expression in English :D
sole
yeah i agree, japanese restaurants in spain are way expeeeeeeensive :-S
I’ll inform about my findings here.
And I’ve replaced sabelotodo with know-it-all … actually I knew it but I had forgotten it XD
humphr3y
Bueno… de todas formas, ten cuidado con el wasabi… :D