Sushi

Picking the fish is the most important part of keeping the cost down and increasing the flavor. The fresher the fish, the less the stink. It’d help if they hadn’t opened up the fish and turned it into a filet yet, but for the average North American like us, we buy fish from a supermarket like Loblaws that have health and safety standards in place. In a normal fish monger’s market, you want to look at the eyes. The clearer the eyes the better. You’ll also want to poke the fish and see how fast the meat returns to normal. If it stays indented, don’t even consider it. A third one to check are teh gills. It should appear birght red like that of the blood, not a dirty red. For my trip around the supermarket, I used translucency as an indication of how fresh the meat is. Live muscles are a bit transparent whereas dead meat are purely opaque.

Preparing ingredients:

The basic concept is to cut everything into strips. Now’s a good time to think about how you want your sushi to taste like. Western culture has adapted Mayonnaise for cheap flavoring and I find that relly good if you are planning on entertaining alot of guests. Mayo, cucumber, eggs, avocado and carrots make good combination of all around sushi. To go for the higher end, you might want to consider adding fish, crab meat and all these sea delight to the mix. A good principle to follow is always having hard and crunchy parts in your sushi. The psychology of food dictates that crunch food are more tasty. For my purpose, I added thin strips of carrots to satisfy this effect.(so is having a big plate which makes it appear that there are less food, and using warm colors for the plate. Blue surpresses appetitie so you can better concentrate on the taste of sushi) Whatever leftover that can’t be converted into thin strips can be used for tempura later. If you follow the poor student’s mantr of “Waste not”, then you can even take the peeled skin of sweet potatoes, carrots, or the stem of the green pepper, put them together in a big bowl with some can of “cream of chicken” to make a good hearty soupe.

To prepare the egg, beat it thoroughly, grease a frying pan and pour the beaten egg in it. Cook on medium heat with a cover on top so that it cooks evenly without burning the bottom part. Carefully slide the egg out on to a cutting board to cut it into long strips.

There’s a special thawing technique developped by the japanese chefs in big sushi chains. They faced a problem of fish supply while serving massive amount of people. The problem is solved by using frozen fish. The conventional problem encountered with frozen fish lies in the fact that they stink more than fresh fish as they decompose faster and faster during the thawing process. So how do you thaw it fast enough to beat the decomposition process? The secret lies in salt. Bath it in a ziploc bag with salted water, then put it in the sink with cold running water on the bag. (We use cold water because hot water will create a buffer between the two temperature and defeating the purpose). It is best to prepare the fish right before serving, after the rice is cooked.
After all is done, refrigerate everything. Sushi doesn’t taste good if it’s warm.

Knife technique

There’s alot to be said about knife technique, but knowing it won’t help you become master about it. Generally, you’ll want a willow style knife specifically just to cut the fish. To take off the skin place the fish on the board, skin down and start by slicing a straight line near the tail end. Insert the knife edge in with the straight edge side up ( the knife edge has one side that’s straight) then just slice through till the end. Some master japanese chef can cut the skin of in one motion while leaving all the good tasty fat on the meat. For the rest of us average north americans, we are just content that they are seperated.

Again, for a student’s lifestlye you can take the fish skin and bake it in the oven(Or bake it on a stove like I do using 2 metal sticks).
It is important for the knife to be sharp. The theory is, the sharper it is, the less tearing it creates when cutting the fish’s molecules, thus keeping the juice in on the cutting edge. To cut the sushi, I usually add a little bit of water to prevent the rice from sticking onto the knife.

Rice cooking:

Rice is a very important factor in the sushi which many overlooked. The best rice for sushi are short grain sushi rice which you can find in most supermarket nowadays costing alot of money. Do me a favor and go to a chinese store to buy these at 1/4 the cost. The fun thing about rice is that you can mix them together to create rice with different properties from each type. On a student’s budget, I mixed 3 style of rice together. Sushi rice, long grained stick rice and long grained indian rice. It creates a scented stick rice that’s not too soft and not too hard.

The best water to use is usually the water from where the rice is grown. I use tap water just because there’s no point to go that route. Bottled mineral water is good, but distilled water with nothing in it is yucky. Rinse the rice thoroughly until the water is not murky with starch anymore. (About 3~4 times)

Use a rice cooker if you don’t have the traditional instruments (i.e. a heavy stone, ceramic pressure cooker, gas stove). Right after it’s done, you want to add sush vineger to mix. It’s better to do it while it’s still hot because the heat will be a catalyst for the vineager and rice to mix, creating a chemical reaction that brings out the sweetness in rice. The best vineager to use are the red ones, though they can rarely be found here. Any rice vineager should do just as well. Mix and taste until you are satisfied, then put the rice near a fan to supercool it. Put a wet towel on top to prevent moisture from being lost.

Rice preparation should be left till the end, before your guest arrives

Making the roll:

This is the easiest and least time consuming part of making sushi. It’s a simple matter of putting the seaweed on the bamboo roller then mix and match. For the traditional style, just put a sheet of seaweed at the bottom, then stuff rice on the whole sheet. You want to wet your hands with water so that the rice doesn’t stick to your hands. Press on the rice as you stick it onto the seaweed so that they are nice and compact. Again, this is up to your experience on how much is enough rice. I’d recommend a 3mm thickness, for the correct rice:ingredient ratio. After the rice is well patted, use your finger to create a crease across and put the ingredients in that crease. Take one edge and fold it to cover the ingredient and keep on rolling. If you can’t do this part, I can’t show you with words.

For the “Californian” style with white rice outside, you’ll need a wet towel (Or ceramwraps). Lay it on top of the bamboo roller and stuff rice on it like you’d done before. Place the seaweed a little bit off so that one edge sticks out. Put half your ingredients there and half in the middle of the roll. Then roll it.