12.6 Sushi

What sushi is

Sushi is vinegared rice, usually topped or filled with other foods: fish, raw or cooked, and vegetables. Outside Japan, people often think sushi means raw fish. It does not. In Japan, sliced raw fish served alone is sashimi, a separate dish; sushi must have rice. The word comes from an old grammatical form that is no longer used, and its literal meaning is "it's sour".

Most sushi uses nori, sheets of seaweed, and is filled or topped with seafood, chicken or vegetables. The cook makes or cuts each piece to a size that can be eaten by hand in one or two bites. It is usually served cool, with soy sauce, pickled ginger and wasabi.

Where it came from

Sushi began, centuries ago, as a way to keep fish. The fish was packed between wads of rice and left to ferment, which preserved it but took months. Some time in the 14th to 16th centuries, cooks added rice vinegar to speed this up, and people began to eat the rice with the fish. Nori was added at about the same time to keep fingers clean, which gave the first rolled sushi.

In the middle or late 18th century, a restaurant in Edo (now Tokyo) began pressing thin slices of fresh fish onto sushi rice. That was the start of Edo-Mae sushi, or nigirizushi. Later, a chef left the rice out altogether, and sashimi was born. Wasabi and pickled ginger probably arrived with Edo-Mae sushi, when the point became tasting very fresh fish.

Kinds of sushi

• Makizushi (maki, rolled sushi): rice and fillings laid on nori, rolled up into a tube, then sliced thickly. It is the kind North Americans know best, and it is easy to make in quantity.
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• Nigirizushi (nigiri, hand-formed sushi): a small bed of rice shaped by hand with one topping, such as tuna, salmon, eel or egg. Gunkanmaki (battleship sushi) is an oval of rice wrapped in a band of nori and topped with something loose, such as fish eggs.
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• Oshizushi (pressed sushi): the topping goes into a wooden mold called an oshibako, the rice goes on top, the lid presses them together, and the block is cut into pieces.
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• Inarizushi (stuffed sushi): a pouch, made of tofu, bean curd, egg or cabbage leaf, holding rice and fillings.
• Chirashizushi (scattered sushi): rice in a box or bowl with seafood such as octopus, squid and tuna, cucumber and green onion laid over it. Tokyo and Osaka each have their own style.
• Saikuzushi: decorative sushi in which colored rice is sliced to show a picture. It is hard to make and costly to buy.
• Temakizushi: rice and seafood such as crab, octopus, tuna or shrimp rolled up in seaweed. It is very common, even in Japanese convenience stores.
• Sashimi: thin slices of raw seafood, mostly fish, with no rice, often cut and arranged into shapes such as flowers. It is not truly sushi, but it is served alongside it.
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The seafood used most often is tuna, salmon, squid and octopus.

Sushi rice

Sushi rice, called shari or sushi meshi in Japanese, is short-grain rice dressed with a seasoned vinegar called sushisu, then cooled and dried a little so it shines and is easy to shape.

Sushi rice and its dressing.

• Half an hour ahead, fill the hangiri with water and leave it. A hangiri is a wide, flat-bottomed wooden tub, traditionally of cypress bound with copper bands; wet wood keeps the rice from sticking.
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• Make the sushisu: warm the vinegar, sugar and salt in a saucepan until they dissolve, without boiling, then let it cool.
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• Rinse the rice: swirl it in cold water, pour off the cloudy water, and repeat until the water stays clear. Let the rice stand for 30 minutes.
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• Put the rice, water, kombu and sake (if using) in the pot and bring it to a boil. Lift out the kombu just as the water boils, and turn the heat down.
• Simmer for 20 minutes. Turn off the heat and leave the lid on for 10 more minutes without looking. A rice cooker does the same job well.
• While the rice is hot, move it to the hangiri (or a large bowl or tray) and add the dressing at room temperature. Work it in with a cutting motion of the rice paddle, like folding egg whites, so the grains do not break. The rice turns glossy.
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• Cover it with a cloth for a few minutes to let the dressing soak in. Then fan the rice while you keep cutting it, until it cools to body temperature. Some chefs skip the fan and let the rice rest for 15 minutes at a time, re-cutting between rests, until it is cool.
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The paddle is a shamoji, a wide flat spoon of bamboo, wood or plastic. Dip it in water often so rice does not stick. Metal is rarely used, because it cuts the grains and scratches the tub.

Cooked rice is a potentially hazardous food, and the danger zone runs from 4°C to 60°C (40°F to 140°F). see chapter 2: Potentially hazardous foods

Rolling maki

To roll maki, you need:

• freshly made sushi rice;
• sheets of nori;
• fillings, such as raw or smoked salmon, tuna, cucumber or avocado;
• wasabi;
• water;
• a makisu, a rolling mat of bamboo sticks tied with string.

For a roll with the rice outside, you also need plastic wrap and, if you like, sesame seeds.

• Set the mat on a cutting board. For an inside-out roll, wrap the mat in two layers of plastic wrap, which keeps the rice off the mat and keeps it clean. Lay a sheet of nori on it, shiny side down.
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• Wet your hands so the rice does not cling, but not too much. Spread a handful of rice over the nori, leaving a 2 centimeter strip bare along one edge. About 6 mm of rice is right: if you cannot see the nori through it, there is too much.
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• For an inside-out roll, flip the sheet so the rice faces the mat.
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• Lay the fillings in a line across the middle. Roll the mat away from you, steadying it with thumbs and the heels of your hands, and tuck the filling under as you reach it.
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• At the end, press the roll gently in the mat to firm it. Do not squeeze the sides hard or flatten the top.
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• Wet the knife before every cut. Cut from the middle outward, into 5, 6 or 8 pieces, so any filling that shifts ends up in the two end pieces. For 6 or 8, halve the roll, set one half behind the other, and cut both together.
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Some common rolls:

• California roll: avocado, crab or imitation crab, and cucumber.
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• Tuna roll: tuna with rice and seaweed; the same plan works for any fish. A spicy tuna roll adds a sauce of Japanese mayonnaise and sriracha.
• Philadelphia roll: raw or smoked salmon with cream cheese.
• Cucumber roll, which is vegan, and egg roll, which is vegetarian.

Raw fish and safety

Fish served raw can carry parasites. Fish meant to be eaten raw, as in sushi and sashimi, must first be frozen to kill them: at −20°C (−4°F) for 7 days, or at −35°C (−31°F) in a blast freezer for 15 hours.

Serving and eating sushi

A full sushi meal can bring miso soup, maki, sashimi and nigiri, with wasabi, soy sauce and pickled ginger. Green tea, beer or water go with it. Sake is thought to add too much rice to a rice meal. Diners move from one item to the next rather than lingering on one, often starting mild, with tamago (a sweet, cold omelette on rice), and ending with something stronger, such as a dark fish. A slice of ginger between pieces clears the palate.

Nigiri can be eaten by hand, because its loosely packed rice may fall apart in chopsticks. Maki can be eaten by hand too. Japanese sushi chefs put a little wasabi on the right pieces as they make them, but not on pieces served with their own sauce.

The usual condiments are:

• Wasabi, a green root in the cabbage family that grows by mountain streams in Japan. It is ground into a fiery paste whose heat rises into the nose, unlike chili heat on the tongue. The plant is hard to grow, so most wasabi sold outside Japan is European horseradish dyed green.
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• Gari, pickled ginger.
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• Soy sauce (shoyu).
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• Kabayaki sauce (eel sauce), served on some sushi and sometimes used for dipping.
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Nori is made from red seaweed of the genus Porphyra, shredded and dried on racks in a process much like papermaking. It wraps maki and onigiri. Darker, costlier nori tastes better and breaks less when rolled; cheap nori is greenish.