Geeking Out: Sushi

[mirrorshard]

Noriko Takiguchi writes about what sushi is, how it is said that one should enjoy it, and why, in a seven-part (so far) series.

The history of sushi goes back as long as to B.C.400 in South East Asia, where people used uncooked rice to marinate raw fish for preservation purposes. Fish was sprinkled with salt and buried in rice. Rice’s fermentation helped fish last long, and provided a rare source of protein at that time. Only fish was served and rice was thrown away.

When this kind of preserved fish came north to Japan around 8th century, people started eating both the fish and the rice. The rice was soft and slightly sour due to the fermentation. This sourness was later replaced by just adding vinegar to cooked rice, when people in Edo era (17th century to mid 19th century) wanted to eat sushi quickly without waiting the fermentation time. But this was not yet the sushi as we know it. The vinegar rice was served not only with fish but also with some vegetables and cooked dried food. We still see developed versions of this kind in many parts of Japan.

http://bayosphere.com/node/973 is the last part, the only one from which all the others are linked.

(via http://xplane.com/xblog/index.php )

Comments

[malvino.livejournal.com]

Cor, cheers :)

I have wondered why sushi before, but not enough to actually find out. I had some vague idea that it was linked to some religious vegitarianism and fish being a bit boring normally.

[wallsy.livejournal.com]

Fish being boring? You must be eating the wrong fish...

[malvino.livejournal.com]

Fish being boring 1000 years ago in small villages (where 99% of all evolved cuisine comes from, evolved as opposed to deliberately invented dishes). Mass choice and availability, a range of spices, cooking styles and ingredients are relatively new things. I imagine that most food was quite boring for peasants back in the day, fish included.

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, this reminds me of a book I read awhile back about Enlightenment cooking - before then, the standard European upper-class diet ran heavily to Large Pieces Of Meat, but the pendulum swung the other way and the meat/fish became totally unrecognizable under the sauces and preparation.

You might want to up that figure of 1000 years a bit - back in 1005 they were doing fairly well for food on the whole, at least in Europe. The documentation's sparse, but archaeological evidence shows us a lot of variety, and reenactors take full advantage of this.

One of the biggest indicators, as I recall from my archaeology course, is that non-meat-focused diets tend to be a lot more varied than the mostly carnivorous ones. Possibly that's because if you have a dead elk, you really need to eat most of it quick before it goes off.

[malvino.livejournal.com]

Well, 1000, 5000, I had no idea when Sushi came about, still, I wouldn't have guessed at preservation by rice fermentation :)

[kake]

I think wallsy has a point. Some fish is extremely uninteresting unless you faff with it a lot - grey mullet, grouper - and other fish - trout, mackerel - is quite delicious whether you boil it, char it over a wood fire, throw its head in a soup, or just eat it raw.

If there aren't any fish that you don't find delicious however simply they're cooked, then maybe you just don't like fish.

But as for sushi! It's best eaten off a compliant MOTAS.

[malvino.livejournal.com]

I know, I love fish, in fact left to my own devices I gravitate towards a diet of fish, fruit and pasta.

However, Sushi has been around a lot longer than a great range of fish on demand, if the village fleet were set up to catch something dull and that's all you got to live on then I'd imagine that you'd come up with things to do with it, like sushi perhaps (although it turns out that wasn't the point of sushi atall, not originally anyhow, later on when they added vinegar to simulate the taste of fermentation you could argue that sushi had become a more intersting way to prepare fish).

For the record, Tiggum never has a point, he completely missed what I was trying to say and went off on a tangent. I've never found fish boring myself (grouper is one of my favorites, but this may have to do with childhood tastes and fishing for them in the middle of the Atlantic), but then I do have a great range available and all kinds of interesting things to go with them should I so wish.

[kake]

I've only just finished skimming the link; I was only replying to the comments before.

I am sceptical of the idea that salt-sprinkled fish will give out enough liquid to make dry, uncooked rice edible, but as a Harold McGee disciple I shall test it properly before I pooh-pooh it entirely.

I've heard the suggestion that the tamago is the great indicator of the quality of a restaurant before, several times, but I don't really find this to be so. For me, the quality of the rice is a much bigger thing. As the article correctly says, it should be lukewarm and not cold; that simple thing makes a huge difference.

I like the idea of making sushi with brown rice. I've tried it lots of times but haven't figured out the right way to make it work yet.

I also like the idea of freezing sushi. I saw a leaflet advertising frozen sushi at Lung Wah Chong in Oxford about eight years ago. Hurrah for food science/