Sushi: My first experience

Thank you to Allison at The French Whisk for becoming a follower of my site! As a fellow Francophile I assure you there will be many French food postings coming up. But let's go international as I tell you of my first experience with Japanese food.

Do you ever have appetizer and movie night? Back in the day when our son lived with us we would grab lots of appetizer type foods and make a party of it while watching a movie on Friday night. The chow varied from bagels and smoked salmon, wings, fruit salad, cheesy Greek tirpoitas, maybe tapenade……… well…...you get the idea.

On many of these appie nights my husband and son would get sushi. I just was not tempted. As a matter of fact, it was more of a hell no I am not eating raw fish. To compound my displeasure, I always made the mistake of sniffing it as it was offered.




“Are you sure you don’t want to even try it?”

Lean in…sniff, sniff….pulls head back quickly. "No. No, I don’t."

“Why do you have to sniff it?!” (as vein pops up on son’s forehead)
"Why can’t you just try it.” (he sighs with exasperation)


Photo credit

Well………….times have changed. I won a $25 gift certificate at a Japanese restaurant so off we went. We had an amazing meal. While I started with California rolls, the baby steps to the raw stuff, I enjoyed it very much. By the way, those rolls were accompanied by hibachi chicken, miso soup and salad.




I really liked it. I also loved the artistic presentations which were coming off that sushi bar. Now I knew I wanted to try more. Challenge accepted.

The next time we went out for lunch I tried a Boston roll (steamed shrimp, lettuce, cucumber and Japanese mayonnaise), a tuna roll, salmon roll and one of Doug’s Yellow tail tuna and scallion rolls. All but the Boston roll was raw and it was delicious. The pickled ginger and wasabi was artfully decorating the side of the plate.

See? Pretty. (and I got this photo with my phone)



Did you know you only need a very small dab of wasabi to experience it’s flavor and heat?
You Do!!!
That’s all…a small amount.



Larger portions spread on your roll will induce a clearing of the sinuses and tears streaming down your face. My eyes watered, nostrils flared and I was between an omg-this-is-delicious and a hell’s donkeys-this-burns state of limbo. Or euphoria.

Either way…….I am hoping we make it to many of the different sushi restaurants around town so we can sample and broaden our my horizons in Japanese cuisine. Doug has always liked what I called bait but yeah....I've since revised my standing on this culinary issue.

Any advice or recommendations are quite welcome, my friends. I am hoping this payday includes another new sushi bar for comparative research.

For anyone who knows me……….Who would have thought.

California Roll recipe
Ingredients:
Makes 4 rolls (32 pieces)

* 4 nori sheets
* 3 cups (15 oz / 470g) sushi rice
* 1-2 cucumbers, cut into thin, lengthwise slices
* 8 jumbo shrimp (king prawns), cooked, shelled, veins and tails removed
* 1-2 avocados, peeled, pitted and sliced
* 4-8 lettuce leaves, torn or sliced (optional)

I am sure I will have more updates on my newest mission here. But I am still a bit afraid of the eel. We'll see.