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

[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 :)