How not to eat sushi…
October 22, 2007
Jan Moir
Sunday October 21, 2007
Observer Food Monthly
Anyone can tell you how to eat sushi. There are sushi bores from here to Japan who just can’t wait to explain how not to dip the rice side of your nigiri into the soy sauce and to always eat it in one bite. Only use chopsticks for sashimi. Use your fingers for sushi rolls, and on a mixed platter, always eat the rolls with the seaweed on the outside first. Never mix the wasabi into your soy sauce, you sushi-snacking peasant. In fact, you must only ever eat wasabi with sashimi, while smugly acknowledging that the bright-green fusion of chemicals on your plate, a mixture of horseradish and mustard powders laced with food dye, bears little resemblance to the subtle complexity of true wasabi, the best of which is grown in gravel stream beds under black curtains in an area to the south west of Tokyo.
Impart this information at every godforsaken opportunity. Remind all that you started eating sushi years ago, long before it became the rage. Make your date feel small by pointing out that the pickled ginger should be used as an inter-course palate cleanser, not as an accompaniment. Always eat the sashimi garnish, which will usually be a bit of green stuff and some radishy nubbins. Knock three times on the ceiling if you want more. Twice on the pipes, bing, bing, means you are choking on a lump of bigeye and require a glass of water.
On and on and on it goes, a riot of sushi rules and regulations, of customs and etiquette demanded by tradition and, yes, a certain amount of snivelling food snobbery, all to consume a simple snack of rice balls and fish. Samurai warriors never had this problem. They just tossed it down like krill and got on with perfecting their pony tails and making lush tartare of their enemies. In comparison, today’s sushi diners are faced with a barrage of dilemmas before they even sit down at the counter to crack open their disposable wooden chopsticks. Yet increasingly, the most important question they must ask themselves is not how to eat sushi, but how not to eat sushi.
What started off as a way of preserving the fish that were left high and dry in paddy fields following floods is now it is taking over the world. The problem with sushi today is not how to manoeuvre kappamaki from plate to mouth without everyone screaming with laughter at your lack of technique, but how to escape the stuff. The planet is awash with California rolls and strips of inferior salmon trapped in little coffins of rice. Sushi is in the supermarket, in shopping malls, in sandwich shops, at the airport. It is available from Mumbai to Morecambe, in Des Moines and in des res everywhere. Most notoriously, it is available at high-end restaurants where gourmands pay huge sums to be titillated by scraps of the finest seafood. At Masa in New York, which holds the distinction of being the most expensive restaurant in America, customers pay around $300 for the basic omakase menu at Masayoshi Takayama’s sushi bar.
At Umu in London, chefs in geta sandals hand-squeeze sushi and serve real wasabi to high rollers who don’t mind indulging themselves with three-figure-plus bills. Just like the eel they serve, no one gets out of Umu, or restaurants like it, without being skinned. Alive, if possible. Unagi tastes better if the chefs cut them open while the creatures are still squirming, because the taste component breaks down rapidly once death sets in. Perhaps that’s why sushi presentation is so abstract and so pretty; it disguises the bloodlust and brutal murder that goes on behind the scenes.
If you are the kind of diner who is willing to dice with mercury poisoning and scomboid side effects, then eating raw fish does clearly have health benefits. I mean, have you ever seen a dolphin with acne or depression? They all look as sleek as seals who, incidentally, are no slouches themselves if there’s any sashimi in the offing. However, anyone gorging on crunchy tuna rolls and avocado/crab combos in the great sushi middle market that is taking over the world should not be deluding themselves that what they are eating is a healthy product. It is an empty banquet of fishy Liquorice Allsorts, bullets of starchy carbs, lozenges of sugared, factory rice with a central vein of greasy, farmed fish. Did Carrie and co realise they were dicing with empty carbs when they chatted over uramaki at Manhattan’s Sushi Samba in Sex and the City? Did Lindsay Lohan realise what she was ingesting in last year’s sushi-fuelled romcom, Just My Luck? Salmon and tuna are farmed in great, sea cages to feed the global sushi market. Trapped in the deep, they grow fat through a lack of exercise and room to move. It is this very fatness – toro, the fatty tuna belly is highly prized – that gives sushi lovers the ‘melt in the mouth’ sensation that they crave. ‘Sushi makes me hum, and I only hum after sex,’ says Julian Clary, which is possibly a sushi fact too far. Meanwhile a Japanese news agency claims that Princess Diana was recently spotted alive and well in a sushi restaurant in Chigasaki where she was eating whale – a ‘delicacy denied her during her years as a princess’. Really, sushi is spooky stuff. Take my advice. Just say no. At least to sushi bores, if not to sushi itself.
Wasabi as a cross-cultural meme
March 31, 2007
Wasabi floating about in space has been deemed newsworthy of late, but wasabi myths in cyberspace still abound and a bigger story – one of a significant cultural/culinary evolution quietly taking place right under our noses, remains largely unreported:
Savvy chefs, scientists, foodies and consumers in-the-know are increasingly discovering that most wasabi isn’t! The resulting groundswell of re-education is rapidly shifting popular public opinion, fast becoming a cross-cultural meme with far-reaching implications. The redefinition of just what wasabi is and isn’t is even changing the oft-cited Wikipedia official definition, with some interesting financial, cultural, culinary and indeed global side-effects. This may seem a lot of flap over a mere condiment, but potential health benefits, heritage, taste and the truth are all at stake – along with millions of dollars and yen.
Although wasabi is commonly equated to “Japanese (or green) horseradish”, no such thing actually exists. Japanese Horseradish is a marketing term made-up to exalt the common (white) horseradish used in inexpensive imitation “wasabi” concoctions along with mustard and food coloring. Wasabi is not a horseradish of a different color and sadly, fake or “faux” wasabi rarely contains any authentic wasabi at all.
The taste of genuine wasabi is not burning or acrid, but a warm, tolerable explosion that quickly fades to a slightly sweet, lingering finish (if this sounds a bit like high-brow wine-speak, one can only say: complex flavors tend to lead down that path). Real wasabi does not give you the same lasting assult of sinus-clearing fire as horseradish. Rather, a pleasant but moderate and short-lived rush is quickly followed by nuanced layers of memorable notes and a unique sweetness on the back of the tongue. This is a hard-to grow princely rhizome, not a common horseradish root. That’s why it earns the big bucks.
Wasabi and horseradish, both members of the Brassicaceae family, share some pungent qualities, but Wasabia japonica(wasabi) is a separate genus with its own species and cultivars, quite distinct from Armoracia rusticana (horseradish) in commercial value, growth habit, chemistry and taste. The real deal takes much longer and is much harder to grow than horseradish and, if found, typically costs ten to twenty times more than its weedy cousin. Wasabia japonica has grown wild for millennium in misty mountain stream beds; but its cultivation in Japan dates to the tenth century. It is tricky to cultivate, requiring cool, damp conditions— it likes cold, pristine water with just the right balance of minerals. The Japanese have long cherished and revered wasabi as a condiment with noodles, sushi and especially sashimi.
In the past decade the Japanese culture, especially foods, have become all the rage in America, to the point of attaining ”flavored nation” status. Chefs and foodies are seeking out authentic Japanese ingredients and none fits the bill more that wasabi. If you can even find it, expect to pay between $70 and $100 per pound (at seven to ten roots per pound, that’s $8 to $10 for one root); One American purveyor, Real Wasabi, LLC, based in Hilton Head Island, S.C., will even provide fresh rhizomes via FedEx overnight. To have authentic fresh, Sawa Wasabi (water grown) delivered straight to your door, simply click here.
Note: Parts of this article are derived, with permission, from copyrighted material posted at www.thenibble.com .
obos
November 15, 2006
what curious profundities obos are… quietly whispering “I was here”… magically appearing here and there…at the shore, along side a mountain path, cliff-side in a national forest…or stream-side in a sunny meadow.
walking softly on the earth and leaving little or no trace is a truly great philosophy, but it is nonetheless nice to see such simple reflections of spirit here and there…as long as it is not overdone. Two years ago I saw a literal field of obos in Boynton Canyon in Sedona. That was a bit over the top. To me, when simply done, such quiet imagery can convey volumes. Do obos resonate for you?
Sabi
Further Reading: while obscure, obos have made an indellible impact on the art world
George Tsutakawa
“For me, 1960 or thereabouts was a time to take another look at the philosophy and art of the Orient–particularly Japanese art–that I had become familiar with in my youth. Through my travels and my studies of traditional Japanese arts I was able to reaffirm my conviction in the Oriental view of nature which sees man as one part of nature, a part that must live in harmony with the rest of nature.From 1960 on, I attempted to express this relationship between man and nature in my works. My sumi-e drawings are a direct response to nature; my fountain sculptures are an attempt to unify water–the life force of the universe that flows in an elusive cyclical course throughout eternity–with an immutable metal sculpture.”
George Tsutakawa, sculptor and painter, is perhaps best known for some sixty public fountains created and installed in North America and Japan since 1960. Tsutakawa served on the faculty of the UW School of Art from 1947 until his retirement in 1976. Perhaps as much as for his body of artistic works, Tsutakawa is beloved as a “treasure of the Pacific Northwest” for the contributions he and his family have made over the years to the cultural life of the region.
Through his painting and sculpture, Tsutakawa explores the relationship of man to nature. In a book about his life and work, UW art historian Martha Kingsbury chronicles the development of the artist, elucidating how his work has been shaped by–and has transcended–the influences of his dual cultural heritage.
He was born in Seattle in 1910 on George Washington’s birthday–the inspiration for his first name. His earliest years were spent on Capitol Hill in Seattle, in a house near Volunteer Park. At the age of seven, he was sent to Japan to live with grandparents. It was there that the young George gained an intimate knowledge of Japanese arts and cultural traditions. He watched his grandparents perform the tea ceremony, practice calligraphy, and create flower arrangements; he took regular lessons with a Zen master, watched traditional Japanese theater performances, and learned to make pottery. By the time he was a teenager, George had decided to become an artist–a decision that didn’t sit well with his father, who sent him back to Seattle in 1927.
Tsutakawa lived with his uncles in Seattle and helped with the family business while attending high school and college. Thrust back into the western world, having forgotten English, Tsutakawa set out to “reinvent” himself. “He clearly chose to construct himself as an American and an art student,” notes Kingsbury. During the summers, he would work in the Alaska canneries. For about the next ten years, he became increasingly involved with printmaking and sculpture, taking inspiration from the sights and sounds of life around the docks in Alaska and in parts of Seattle.
In 1932, Tsutakawa went to the University of Washington, where as an art major he studied with sculptors Dudley Pratt and the internationally-known Alexander Archipenko. After undergraduate school, he became deeply involved in managing a retail outlet for his father’s import-export company, located at the intersection of Jackson Street and Rainier Avenue South in Seattle. In the ensuing years, Tsutakawa’s artistic life became focused on the downtown arts scene, where he grew close to a group of up-and-coming artists including Mark Tobey and Morris Graves, among others.
With onset of World War II, Tsutakawa was drafted and served a four-year tour of duty; ironically, the family’s business was confiscated. The years spent away allowed him to travel and tour major museums, broadening his exposure to the larger world of contemporary art. He returned to Seattle in 1946 with a new dedication to art, going to graduate school at the UW on the GI bill.
“One of America’s most internationally prominent sculptors and one of the most celebrated Asian-American artists in our history.”
–Jerome Silbergeld, UW School of Art
The year 1947 marked two major milestones in Tsutakawa’s life: he married Ayame Iwasa, and joined the faculty of the UW School of Art. Beginning in 1950, he taught part-time in the School of Architecture as well. “Teaching was an arena for the collaborative and public tendencies that were increasingly preoccupying him,” writes Kingsbury. Through these activities he became involved in collaborations with engineers, architects, and designers–a forerunner of his work with public fountains and sculptures in the years to come.
During this time he also extended his work to other media. In the late 1940s, Tsutakawa created a number of chairs, tables, and lamps. The light fixtures were constructed with bamboo cylinders, with sections cut away in various shapes and filled with translucent paper or plastic. “These strongly sculptural abstract forms would be seen to relate to cylindrical and symmetrical sculpture Tsutakawa executed much later,” writes Kingsbury. “Perhaps the interplay of matter with light anticipates this later counterpoint of metal and water,” she notes. He also made a series of reliefs in cedar, and a variety of abstract and representational paintings.
The late 1950s marked a turning point in Tsutakawa’s career, when two events converged to propel him on a new course. He returned to Japan after nearly three decades to rediscover his Japanese artistic heritage. During the same period, a friend had given him a copy of a book by U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, Beyond the High Himalayas, in which Douglas describes the ritually stacked rock structures, called obos, left by pilgrims to celebrate a successful crossing of a high mountain pass.
These rock forms, at once both public monument and private, spiritual statement, served as a major part of the inspiration for a series of Tsutakawa’s sculptures and later, for his fountains. Those works also show the influence of the stone towers and pagodas of Japan, and the vertical-stacked image-units of the totem poles of the native peoples in the Pacific Northwest. “In these Obos, then, Tsutakawa achieved a deeply satisfying synthesis of many components of his experience–the Asian with the western, the informal vernacular with the deeply individualized, the personally meaningful with the publicly accessible,” concludes Kingsbury.
By this time, the Tsutakawa family had moved to a house in the Mt. Baker area of Seattle, which became a regular gathering place for university colleagues and artists like Tobey and Paul Horiuchi. “Some dinner parties at the house in 1957 evolved into group painting sessions exploring the quick fluid effects of sumi ink,” notes Kingsbury. In later decades, Tsutakawa would further explore that medium, creating a range of works, including landscapes, still-lifes, and plant and animal forms. His sumi landscapes are vigorous, bold; some are almost kinetic. Landscape subjects include Mt. Rainier, the Cascade Mountains, and the rugged coastal rocks at Point of Arches on the Olympic Peninsula.
In 1958, the Board of the Seattle Public Library invited Tsutakawa to design a fountain for the plaza of the main library in downtown Seattle, then under construction. The result, Tsutakawa’s Fountain of Wisdom, “is essentially a stack of abstract forms on a single vertical axis. These basic shapes as well as this fundamental structure are reminiscent of the Obos. Here, from the bottom up, are a footed base, a shallow bowl, a pronged remnant of a sphere, a hollowed ovoid, and another shallow bowl.…Water piped to the top spills over the lips and edges in a cascade of sheets and planes that add their own geometry to the bronze forms,” notes Kingsbury.
Fountain of Wisdom was the first in a long series that would come to include works such as the Waiola Fountainat the Ala Moana Center, Honolulu; the Song of the Forest fountain, Sendai, Japan; the Lotus Fountainat the Fukuyama Fine Art Museum, Fukuyama, Japan; the Joshua Green Fountain at the Washington State Ferry Terminal, Pier 41, Seattle; Fountain of Reflection, MacKenzie Hall, School of Business, UW; Safeco Fountainat the Safeco Plaza, Seattle; Fountain of Pioneers, Bentall Centre, Vancouver, B. C.; and Hanging Fountain in the KING Broadcasting Building, Seattle, among many others.
