Sushi For Dummies

Judi Strada, Mineko Takane Moreno

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781118053379
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Arte
• Subtopic: Artes culinarias

Demystify the sushi bar experience Stuffed with tips and tricks - you'll roll, press, and mold sushi like a pro! From rolling sushi properly to presenting it with pizzazz, this book has everything you need to know to impress your friends with homemade maki-sushi (rolls) and nigiri-sushi (individual pieces). You'll find over 55 recipes from Tuna Sushi Rice Balls to Rainbow Rolls, plus handy techniques to demystify the art of sushi making - and make it fun! Discover how to:
* Find the right equipment and ingredients
* Understand the special language of sushi
* Make fragrant sushi rice
* Prepare vegetarian and fish-free recipes
* Dish up sushi-friendly drinks and side dishes

Part I

Discovering the World of Sushi

In this part . . .

I n this part, we briefly go over what sushi is and is not, and discuss how today’s sushi has traveled from its humble beginnings 200 years ago as a street snack in Japan to the fanciest sushi bars all around the world. After we explore the history and diversity of sushi, we take you into the kitchen to show you what you need in the way of equipment — which is really very little — to make sushi at home. We also explain what ingredients you’ll want to have on hand to make sushi for family and friends, plus we spell out the ABCs of working with fresh seafood.

Chapter 1

Embarking on the Sushi Adventure

In This Chapter

Looking at sushi’s benefits

Sitting down to great sushi meals at home

Finding your way around a sushi bar

S ushi is a world of tantalizing, clean, fresh flavors. Pristinely beautiful, plump, and chewy white rice, glistening with freshness and flavored with a fragrant vinegar dressing, is topped or mixed with fresh vegetables, cheese, tofu, or whatever you desire.

Notice we didn’t say anything about raw fish. Why? Because there’s a huge misconception that sushi means raw fish, when it really means vinegared rice or items served on or in vinegared rice. This inaccurate belief probably came to be because sushi bars, where most people first experience sushi, offer gorgeous sashimi (sliced raw seafood) dishes, and sushi is frequently topped or made with raw seafood.

We’re not trying to take anything away from raw seafood — we love it! Sushi For Dummies offers great raw seafood information (see Chapter 4) and raw seafood sushi recipes. But when you consider that prepared sushi rice functions like bread in a sandwich, you begin to understand how versatile sushi is and how it can be a favorite food in any cook’s repertoire, from vegetarians to fish, poultry, and meat lovers. We offer all kinds of sushi recipes made without raw fish, such as sushi bar favorites California Inside-Out Rolls, Caterpillar Inside-Out Rolls, and Cucumber Sliced Rolls, all in Chapter 8.

In this chapter, we demystify sushi, touching on its development over the last 2,000 years; what’s involved in the way of ingredients, tools, and techniques to make all the satisfying sushi at home you could want; and how to get the absolute best experience out of a visit to a sushi bar.

Appreciating Sushi’s Past, Present, and Future

Sushi can be over-the-top-chic at times, such as our Smoked Salmon Sushi Packages in Chapter 11, but that’s not how it started out. It has a very humble past.

Over 2,000 years ago, Japan learned about preserving fish by packing or pressing it in salt and rice, a practice that was common throughout Southeast Asia at the time. An early type of pressed sushi, called nare-zushi, was held for months before the preserved fish was eaten, and the fermented rice thrown out. One of these early pressed sushi, funa-zushi, or preserved carp, developed around AD 700, is still enjoyed in Japan today — the pickled carp eaten, the fermented rice thrown out.

Fast forward to the fifteenth or sixteenth century, when the pressing process was substantially shortened, creating nama-nare-zushi, meaning partially fermented sushi. For the first time, the Japanese began to eat this freshly fermented, tangy rice with the pickled fish instead of discarding it. Pick up the pace and enter the seventeenth century, when a savvy Japanese sushi connoisseur thought to add vinegar to cooked rice to obtain the desired tangy rice taste, creating haya-zushi, or instant vinegared sushi rice. But the Japanese still pressed the vinegared rice with fish or other foods, waiting awhile before eating it. By the eighteenth century, maki-zushi, or rolled sushi, and chirashi-zushi, or scattered sushi, also began to appear.

By the early nineteenth century, nigiri-zushi, or finger sushi, came into being as sushi stalls popped up in Japan, offering these bite-sized vinegared rice treats to on-the-go customers. In 1824, a great moment in sushi history, a Tokyo (formerly Edo) sushi stall operator named Hanaya Yohei offered finger sushi topped with slices of raw fish, like our Tuna Finger Sushi in Chapter 8. Word quickly spread out from his stall, and now around the world, that raw fish and vinegared rice make a perfect pair!

Oshi-zushi, today’s pressed sushi, is all about freshly cooked rice that is tossed with a rice vinegar dressing, cooled, then pressed with the freshest and best ingredients available, and eaten that same day (see our Crabmeat and Avocado Pressed Sushi with Wasabi Mayonnaise in Chapter 9). Many other types of sushi have developed over the years, and their origins are not always clear. Their taste and popularity are now well established, however, and they include such sushi as temaki-zushi, or hand rolls, and inari-zushi, or tofu pouches, both of which we offer in this cookbook.

Today, the names of sushi dishes, even the names of types of sushi, can vary for the same dish or same type of sushi, depending on the country you’re in, the sushi bar you’re in, who you’re talking to, or for other reasons (see Chapter 6). After you read how sushi rice and types of sushi are made, you’ll be able to work your way around this sticky rice name situation, and figure out what a sushi dish is by what’s gone into it, regardless of what it’s being called.

Today, sushi has lots going for it:

Sushi tastes good and makes you feel good. Sushi doesn’t contain big hunks of any food item. It’s all small bites of flavorful foods that leave you feeling satisfied, but not stuffed or heavy.

Sushi is good for you. It consists predominately of lowfat, high-protein, and complex-carbohydrate ingredients and is rich in vitamins and minerals. Sushi is the perfect food for a health-conscious nation.

Sushi exposes you to tastes and textures you may not have experienced before — it’s an adventure! Your first taste of lively pickled daikon radish (takuan), slippery and chewy longneck clam, or the buttery richness of raw tuna will wake you up to a whole world of exciting food choices!

Sushi is an incredibly well-designed food. Rice vinegar, wasabi, pickled ginger, and soy sauce all have antibacterial properties, which are helpful when working with raw fish.

Sushi is frugal. Nothing is wasted in Japanese cuisine, and sushi is proof of that attitude. When you order raw sweet shrimp (ama...