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Fig Tree is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
First published 2013
This digital edition published 2016
Copyright © Yuki Gomi, 2013
Photography copyright © Keiko Oikawa
Illustrations copyright © Giulia Garbin
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Cover illustration © Giulia Garbin
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Epub ISBN 978-0-241-27880-2
ISBN: 978-0-241-14564-7
Yuki Gomi is a Japanese chef who has taught thousands of people Japanese cooking and how to make their own sushi. After studying cordon bleu cookery in Chicago, she trained under Japanese master chefs, before moving to London and beginning to teach Japanese cooking classes. Sushi at Home is her first book.
www.yukiskitchen.com
Sushi in Japan
When I was a child and my mother would say that we were going to have sushi tonight, I would be filled with excitement. I was excited about the food, of course, but also about where and how we would be eating it – would we be making it at home or going somewhere special? Sushi eaten at a restaurant and home-style sushi are quite different for Japanese people. Sushi is a unique food culture, a cuisine within a cuisine: anything from the blur of dishes as they pass in a kaiten (conveyor-belt) sushi restaurant; to super-fresh sliced nigiri, those beautiful slices of fish resting on a rice pillow, in a small restaurant next to Tsukiji fish market amongst the bustle of the market traders; to high-end Kyoto dining while watching geishas pass by; to the bento boxes you see hundreds of smartly dressed children taking to school every day.
My grandmother always took me to a fantastic traditional sushi restaurant. For me, the experience of eating sushi in this restaurant was completely different from cooking and eating it at home. When I walked in, I was greeted with different words from those used in other sorts of restaurants, and the quiet calm and the mesmerizing sight of the chef’s flawless movements as he cut the fish made me feel immediately that I was somewhere special. It is this attention to detail, presentation, preparation and the enjoyment of the process that unites sushi in all its forms. When the Japanese salaryman rolls out his napkin, puts down his bento box and arranges his chopsticks to one side before beginning his lunch, it is the ceremony he has in mind, a chance to escape and enjoy something luxurious.
Japan has always had specialities – sushi restaurants, tempura restaurants, eel restaurants, and so on. The people who work there spend years honing their skills. Itamae master sushi chefs – and these are almost always men, rarely women – begin by working at sushi restaurants as apprentices when they are teenagers. Training takes years: they start by washing the rice, and it can be four years before they progress to washing the fish, let alone cutting it. Although this may seem a strange and lengthy process, it demonstrates how much Japanese culture respects its food. Japanese people do not eat sushi every day, and it is often considered a meal for a special occasion. The array of Japanese restaurants serving ramen, katsu curry and yakitori in London alone is testament to the growing popularity and variety to be found within Japanese cooking.
Making Sushi at Home
I respect Japanese sushi culture, but as a woman from a younger generation who has studied in America and lived in the UK, I like to take a different approach: after all, with home cooking, you can’t spend four years learning to wash rice. Thankfully, there’s a difference between going out and respecting tradition, and making something lovely to eat at home.
With nigiri, you have to slice the fish very quickly, touching it only once – in fact, my old mentor doesn’t use his right hand at all to touch the fish – and you would never make nigiri at home, because it wouldn’t taste right. But you can make temari, which is very similar in style, easy to make, and looks stunning. If it’s nigiri you are looking for, then save your appetite for the many high-end restaurants and enjoy watching the beautiful work of a master sushi chef!
So the ingredients, the setting and the atmosphere may change, but the general approach in all cases is a real care for the food’s preparation and the quality of ingredients. Sushi always feels like a treat, a fine-dining experience, but it can be prepared easily at home. Sushi is a cuisine in itself, defined in all its forms by the pride taken in making something really special and delicious. Whatever the setting, sushi is my favourite food and I always delight in teaching people how to make it.
Sushi is not something to be afraid of. You need to learn a few methods to prepare beautiful sushi at home, but don’t worry – this is not about spending ten years training in a Kyoto kitchen or using expensive equipment; in fact, I’ll be showing you how to use a hairdryer to perfect your rice. And nowadays you can buy a huge range of Japanese products very easily, without breaking the bank.
The most important thing is keeping an open mind: whether you want to use caviar or cucumber, as long as you enjoy what you make, then that is fine. A simple pasta dish is truly great if you use fresh, good-quality pasta cooked properly; similarly, if you make good rice, then you can make wonderful sushi. Japanese food is very simple to make, it is one of the healthiest ways to eat and it can be easily incorporated into your daily life. Achieving the equivalent of al dente perfection can be a precise process, so follow the methods carefully and enjoy the challenge. Get the basics right, be discerning with your ingredients and experiment!
My Approach
Japanese food is so delicious that it is easy to forget that it is healthy too, and I love teaching people how to prepare it. My approach is based on three principles:
Chisan, chisho – ‘produce locally, eat locally’
As far as possible use ingredients that can be bought easily and locally: ready-cooked crab, smoked salmon, mackerel, asparagus, cucumber, avocado, spinach and green beans, for example. Of course, we don’t live in a bubble, and Japanese food would be impossible to create without some key ingredients from further afield. Luckily, sushi rice, nori, wasabi and other formerly hard-to-find products are all now widely available in supermarkets and online, which makes it much easier, but my sushi recipes are designed to be accessible and enjoyed by anyone keen to learn, in any location.
Nowadays you can eat everything, everywhere, at any time. However, I recommend trying to use the ingredients available to you, as inventiveness improves the experience. It was only when my family visited Tokyo that we would eat Edomae, or Tokyo-style sushi, for example. I love exploring different parts of England at the weekend and using Norfolk smoked fish or Cornish crab to create new recipe combinations, and I grow some of the more difficult-to-find ingredients, like the herb shiso, in my garden.
Otaku – ‘[be a] geek!’
Talk to your grocer and your fishmonger. Care about the ingredients and the process. Be fussy about what you use in your dishes and where it comes from. There are no short cuts or tricks if you don’t have good fresh fish or vegetables. When I first took my friends to Japan we caught the bus to Yamanashi, a journey of two hours or so. The whole way there, three elderly but very lively ladies were having a passionate chat. Keen to know the subject, my friend was surprised to discover that they had been talking about food – in this case pickles – for over two hours: the best way to pickle daikon, its health benefits, its taste, what time of year to do it, the beautiful colours you could achieve depending on which vinegars were used, and so on.
Tejun and tegiwa – ‘preparation and process’
Get the basics right. As with the example of al dente pasta, Japanese food is about getting some basic methods spot-on. To make perfect sushi rice, for example, it is critical to cool it down properly (not only to give it the right texture, but also for safety), and learning how to do this is integral to the process. It is really easy to do and makes all the difference. Skip it and it will not be right!
Fish and Sustainability
After freshness, local, sustainable and seasonal are the three points that I think are most important when buying food, and this applies when I am buying fish too. In my sushi classes, my students always ask about fish. Of course it is very important to find good-quality seafood, so when you find a good fishmonger, try to make friends with them. Don’t be afraid to ask about the quality of the fish, its freshness and the recommended fish of the day.
It is very important to buy sushi- or sashimi-quality fish and seafood to make sushi or sashimi. Although there are no precise legal definitions of these terms, according to European Union guidelines sushi- or sashimi-quality fish and seafood has to be very fresh, taking note of possible food-borne illnesses from bacteria and parasites. So find a fishmonger that you trust. You don’t have to go to a Japanese fishmonger – I go to good fishmongers on the high street.
Look out for the MSC logo on products. This certifies that the fish comes from a fishery that has been classed sustainable. All of the major supermarkets now stock MSC-certified fish and seafood, and you can also buy ethical, sustainable fish online – see ‘Stockists’, here, for more details.
Try to use local fish such as mackerel and sea bream. Ask your fishmonger where and how the fish was caught. Look out for line-caught or pole-caught fish and hand-dived or creel-caught seafood, and avoid anything that has been bottom-trawled, beam-trawled or dredged in order to catch it. See ‘Preparing Fish & Seafood’ (here), for further information on freshness and sustainability.
Traditional Accompaniments to Sushi
Soy sauce and wasabi
In sushi restaurants in Japan it is usual for chefs to add the wasabi to the inside of the sushi before it is made – or, if you prefer, you can ask the chef to make the sushi without wasabi when your order is taken, which is what I did when I was a child. When you’re making sushi at home, you can either add wasabi to the roll itself or, as I prefer to do, add it to the soy sauce and mix it with the end of your chopsticks, so that it combines – this way you can control the heat. Use as much wasabi as you like, although remember that you should be able to taste the sushi filling. Similarly, you should dip your sushi into the soy sauce or soy sauce and wasabi mixture gently, so that very little of it is absorbed: the sushi rice should not soak up lots of soy sauce. You are not making a risotto; it’s an accompaniment, so don’t drown the rice! If you’re eating nigiri at a restaurant you should dip the edge of the fish, not the rice, into the sauce, otherwise it runs the risk of collapsing. If you’re eating temari (a ball-shaped sushi that has thin layers of fish on top, but which can be made at home, unlike nigiri), then you should do the same. It’s OK to use your hands, so don’t worry if you haven’t quite mastered your chopsticks yet.
Pickled ginger
Many people add a piece of pickled ginger to their sushi, which is fine, but it was originally intended as a palate cleanser. When you eat sushi – at a restaurant, or at home – you are often eating lots of different types of fish, and a small amount of pickled ginger in between each type of sushi helps to stop the different flavours becoming muddled.
Serving Your Sushi
There are no rules to serving sushi when you’re cooking at home. If you were eating out, you might start with miso soup or sashimi – it’s traditional for sushi bars to serve sashimi first, before you are too full – but at home you can serve dishes all together. If you are cooking for four people, say, I would make miso soup, one type of salad (one of the sashimi or seafood salads in this book) and three different types of sushi roll. Of course, it depends on the individual, but one hungry person will eat around twenty pieces. I like to mix everything up and serve different types of roll on a big platter. Contrary to what popular sushi chains would have us believe, in Japan you wouldn’t arrange sushi pieces so that they sit flat on the plate, but would place them so that they are standing up, on their sides.
In Japan, green tea is served with sushi, but of course there’s no reason why you shouldn’t drink beer or wine – or, of course, sake.
Safety
Sushi vinegar helps to preserve sushi rice, but you should still consume it on the same day that it is made, and do not refrigerate it. I would recommend keeping sushi for no more than half a day once it is made.
To my students, future, past and present
abura-age: thinly sliced and deep-fried tofu, used to make inari sushi
aonori: seaweed powder
daikon: Japanese radish; you can also use mooli
dashi: Japanese stock
edamame: boiled soya beans
furikake: a dry Japanese seasoning, sprinkled on to rice
gari: pickled ginger
genmai miso: brown rice miso
hatcho miso: blended with roasted barley, this is very dark brown and has a longer fermentation compared to other types of miso. A unique and strong flavour
hijiki: sea vegetable, usually available dried and in small pieces
ikura: salmon roe (large roe)
katsuobushi: bonito flakes
kinshi tamago: Japanese-style egg crêpe
kombu: dried kelp, a sea vegetable with a very clear and gentle flavour available in sheet form or cut into pieces (usually 1cm × 3cm), normally used for making stock
kombu dashi: kelp stock
kome miso: rice-based miso, blended with barley
masago: capelin roe (very small roe)
mirin: a Japanese sweet rice wine used for seasoning
miso: a paste produced by fermenting soya beans, rice and barley with salt and koji fungus, used to make soups or sauces. There are many different varieties of miso, like beer, and it is divided into dark (aka miso) or white (shiro miso); see genmai miso; hatcho miso; kome miso; mugi miso; saikyo miso
mizuna leaves: Japanese mustard greens
mugi miso: barley miso
natto: fermented soya bean
nori: seaweed sheet, mostly used for sushi
panko: Japanese breadcrumbs, slightly larger and rougher than the Western equivalent, are readily available in supermarkets in the specialist sections
sake: Japanese rice wine
sesame seeds: black seeds have a stronger, nuttier flavour than the white. Both are available at Asian and Arabic grocery
saikyo miso: blended with rice, this miso is very pale and has a shorter fermentation and lighter taste than other types. It originated in Kyoto and is gluten free
shiso leaves: Japanese herb (perilla leaves)
soba noodles: buckwheat noodles
sushi rice: cooked Japanese rice and sushi-su
sushi-su: