I consider this noteworthy for three reasons: (1) she's ten years old, (2) like Princess V and I, she's gaijin, and (3) I believe this gustatory love was only made possible by Girlchild's enduring courage. Girlchild is tiny, not a big exercise buff, and to the best of my knowledge has no martial skills (if you discount surreptitious studies in world conquest and domination), and Girlchild is decidedly a Little Girl. She likes frilly and colorful clothes, plays with dolls, buries herself in stuffed animals every night, and has been known on occasion to pout (under extreme duress, she can produce tears the size of concord grapes).
To provide a little contrast, consider Firstchild. Firstchild (who is twenty-three years old and attending college in Washington state) considers herself a Japanophile of the first order. She reads Japanese, absorbs manga and anime, and at times appears to be on the verge of anime-dom. She recently won a costume competition at a gaming convention, dressed as a Pokemon villain. Her dream career, I believe, would be designing and modifying a series of virtually reality games based on Pokemon or YuGiOh or Sailor Moon—that or discovering a magical orb from another planet and using the super powers conferred by said amulet to rid the universe of an Unknown Evil with the reach of the Yakuza and table manners of Yog-Sothoth. Firstchild also loves Iron Chef (well, we have that much in common, at least). Firstchild will not eat sushi. At the very mention of sushi, she makes The Face.
For an experimental cook, a courageous audience is a must. It's particularly convenient to have them living with you. You can see, then, why (aside from the obvious proud step-papa thang) I might find Girlchild's culinary daring laudable.
Of course, life with a courageous ten-year-old has its drawbacks. Oh, I don't mean the run of the mill foolhardy daredevilism. We get enough tree-scaling, traffic dodging, equilibrist-cum-human-fly thrills of that particular "Hey, Dad! Watch this!" variety from Boychild. Girlchild's bravery is both tempered and sharpened, you see, by her intellect.
Girlchild, you see, reads like a Harvard law student. Oh, sure, lots of Harry Potter and Madeleine l'Engle and Brian Jacques and Roald Dahl and all the jolly-pree-teen pap, but also all of Dahl's adult works and Douglas Adams and J. R. R. Tolkein and Edgar Rice Burroughs and Lewis Carroll and Edgar Allan Poe. During any quiet moment, if she's not on the computer, Girlchild is burrowing through another book. Sometimes, she's retilling familiar ground. She read the Lord of the Rings saga a half dozen times last year, and her Harry Potter tomes have begun shedding their binding glue. Girlchild's reading has unearthed a wealth of vocabulary, and she spends that wealth unabashedly, gilding her conversations with sesquipedalian terms the way most ten-year-olds layer on the cools and dudes and all the latest slang. Girlchild's speech bears, as Princess V points out, the autodidact's stamp. The very words she incorporates into her discourse with such syntactic, semantic, and phonetic aplomb are, often as not, misprounounced. I know that quirk intimately. Just this past week, I made my first attempt (since learning it over a quarter-century ago) to use the word syzygy aloud and botched the whole affair (no animals were harmed in the botching of this conversation, my ego suffering only minor contusions in the fall).
Girlchild takes her intelligence in stride. She's proud of her verbal facility without being overbearing (most of the time), but she exudes a T. S. Eliot attitude about her erudition: anyone worth her time will understand the words and allusions she chooses to use. I think she has every reason to be proud: she works hard for her vocabulary, and I hope no one ever manages to shame her out of that pride.
Where then, you might wonder, are the drawbacks? The tempering effect of intelligence, as I've already suggested, eliminates most foolhardiness. Sure, bright kids can do stupid things—they're still kids. I expect that. I may not be prepared for it every time, may not anticipate it as often as I'd like, but I do expect it.
The problem is the whole Disney Evil Genius scenario. Ever notice that, in Disney cartoons and anime, the villain is always the intelligent brother? I've always considered this the most counterproductive possible prejudice. Why study hard if you don't intend to become an Evil Overlord? I've also long believed this idea to be fomented by former whiz kids and the parents of whiz kids. We've all known obnoxious brilliant children; the ones who assume we're all morons and expend much breath explaining their own genius to us. Honestly, though, even the non-obnoxious genius child is always up to something: dreaming, planning, searching.
When Princess V and I were kids, we found clever ways to provide light under the blankets for after-hours' readings. Our parents eventually found and confiscated our flashlights or spotted the light leaking around the coverlets and confiscated our flashlights or simply refused to buy more D-cell batteries, so we moved on to cleverer means: indicator lights on battery-powered toys, phosphorescence, bioluminescence. You don't need much if you're willing to read a word or two at a time. We knew, despite warnings about lost sleep and eyestrain, despite appeals to authority, that the benefits or our clandestine readings outweighed the possible detriments. What did our parents know, anyway? If they were so smart, why weren't they catching us?
Just think of the havoc we would have wrought if we'd had access to the Internet.
Girlchild has access to the Internet.
A month ago, she lost a week's access to the Web when we caught her maintaining secret email accounts. (Her excuse: "I just wanted to see what BrandX's email was like." Yes, even brilliant children spew forth a protective ink-cloud of lame excuses at unexpected confrontations).
A few days ago, she lost access again for registering in an online rôle playing game. Her previously–spelled-out access rules had included no signing up for anything online without permission. We're not unreasonable. She plays on the Neopets site; she's registered with Disney; she has AOL IM buddies; she publishes fan fiction. Registering to play the part of an itinerant vampire in an online RPG, one that automatically includes an email address, was not on her approved list. Neither was coercing or exhorting her little friends to join.
Frankly, the Goth influence does not concern me. Vampirism, with all its anti-Christian, sub-societal, moribund, and carnal subtexts will likely have no longterm negative effects on Girlchild. I've raised teenagers before. I realize that, when the hormones hit, whether we specifically allowed or forbade her pre-teen self access to Internet Goth culture will neither accelerate nor prevent her adolescent tumble into darkness. Angst comes or it does not. It comes to some in a shy awkwardness and to others in a dark wave of Goth. One day, she'll wake up and decide to don black leather and fishnets, to shave part of her hair and dye the rest with black shoe polish, to limn her eyelids with kohl, and to insist that her soulname is Death Petal; or she won't.
In this case, the more serious problem was Girlchild's aforementioned recruitment of a friend into the vampire RPG. Friend's dad called us, shocked to have discovered that his daughter was receiving email from a young gentleman she'd met in the online city. Dad was not pleased to see letters to his innocent ten-year-old darling coming from an adult who styles himself Blood Sucker.
So, once again, we had the Terrible-Web-Perverts-Who-Prey-Upon-Children Talk™ with Girlchild and suspended her Internet privileges for another couple weeks. She was devastated. She immediately started reading another series of books.
This week, Girlchild is learning to scuba dive so that she can join Princess V and I on occasional undersea excursions. Lucky kid and lucky us getting to take her along, but of course this is one more thing to terrify my parental side. In just a couple weeks, we'll be flying along in the current with our little neoprened Power Puff Girl floating alongside us. The thrill with which I anticipate this experience is, frankly, flavored with just a dash of trepidation. She'll be okay: she's smart and she's brave. She'll also bear constant watching because she's smart and she's brave. Smart and brave and capable of scuba diving: sounds like an anime villain just waiting to take over the world.
Anyway, it was Girlchild's suggestion, this past weekend, that caused my second foray into the realm of sushi. I don't think it's what she had in mind, however. When I asked what she wanted for dinner and she replied, "Sushi," I think she expected to go out to Koreana Grill or get takeout nori-maki from Central Market. Then again, who knows into what fiendishly clever plan of hers I may have stumbled when I went to the cupboard and opened that seemingly innocuous box of sushi rice.
My first efforts with sushi didn't exactly whet my appetite for that particular activity. It did, however, annoy hell out of me, which, perversely, did whet my appetite. It's not that I'm masochistic (much). I hate giving in to any kind of cooking (okay, I avoid baking breads and cakes, but I find that activity boring). Moderate success (you know: the dish is adequate and relatively easy to prepare but nothing to write home about) is more likely to keep me away from a dish or technique than outright failure. In all fairness to myself, my first nigiri-zushi efforts were not failures; they did lack elegance, though.
You can find lots of information on sushi online, so I won't go into detail about different types of sushi, history, or table manners. I have noticed a certain lack of detail, however, concerning what can go wrong in sushi preparation. Much of the available advice on sushi preparation sounds like passed on lore with little or no meat. What follows, then, are some tyro observations on sushi preparations.
Sushi rice
Sushi rice is frequently, colloquially referred to as "sticky rice." This is a misnomer and can cause you shopping problems. Sticky rice is a Thai dessert dish. You want sushi rice: matured California or Japanese short-grain rice. If it doesn't say "sushi rice" on the package, it's probably the wrong rice.
The drill goes something like this:
- Rinse the bejesus out of the rice.
- Cook the rice (1 cup of rice to 1¼ cup water) in a rice cooker or on the stovetop.
- Cool the rice (a far more complex procedure than you might imagine) and add seasoned rice wine vinegar.
The rinsing is to clean off the dry preservative. Once upon a time, sushi rice was packed in talc to dissuade thrips. Nowadays, it's packed in starch dust. Either way, you want the rinse water to run clear. This usually takes a dozen or more rinsings. Rinse with cold water only. The starch will stick to the rice if you use warm water. I don't know what difference this makes in the cooking, but I'm sure it would be very bad.
Sushi rice is, as anyone who has ever eaten sushi knows, quite tacky. It's also slightly sweet and slightly tart. If you've never eaten any of the milder nigiri-zushi (such as tamago [omelet]) or if you always drown your sushi in soy sauce and wasabi, you might not have noticed the vinegar. That stickiness is important. Too sticky and it adheres to everything: the plate, your fingers, your chopsticks, your clothing, your facial hair, your car keys. Not sticky enough and the sushi rice pad falls apart.
The real trick here is the cooling process. Oh, sure, the rice has to be cooked to the right consistency, and you have to add the correct amount of seasoned vinegar, and you don't want to scrape any overcooked (browned) rice from the pot or cooker into the cooling bowl, but none of these factors is quite as limiting as the cooling process. If you do not cool the rice enough, it will be too tacky and almost impossible to work. If you allow the rice too cool on its own, it will cool unevenly and be crusty on one side and damp on the other. If you stir the rice too hard or add the vinegar too early, it will break up and turn into a gunky mass with the consistency of partly dried white school glue.
Most sushi-preparation guides follow the lore: use a cedar, ceramic, or glass cooling bowl. Cool the rice by fanning it while carefully separating and polishing it with a bamboo paddle (shamoji). Do not add the vinegar until the rice is cooled. Do not handle the rice until it is cooled. Do not use a metal bowl or metal spoon to cool the rice.
All of this sushi cooling lore turns out to be rational to some degree.
The cooling bowl and shamoji must not be metal because you add vinegar at the end of the process. If you mix separate and cool the rice in a metal bowl and with a metal spoon, you may (after you add the vinegar) impart a metallic taste to the rice. I have not attempted this, but I have tasted the seasoned rice wine vinegar after letting it stand in a metal spoon for a minute or two, and it does impart a metal oxide to the mixture. (Side note: you can make your own sushi-zu, but it's just rice wine vinegar, salt, and sugar. The prepared seasoned rice vinegars are inexpensive, easy to find, and taste just fine. Even though you wait until the rice is cooled to add the vinegar, because you still have to continue separating and polishing the rice after you add the vinegar, it's going to be in the cooling bowl for several minutes. I agree with the lore on this one: non-metal bowl and shamoji to avoid the metallic taste. This stuff is just too much trouble to blow it all over something so simple to control.
Getting just the right touch with the shamoji, separating the rice for cooling and stirring it around to polish it without mashing it to pabulum: this take practice. I found that I had to stop ever few minute and rinse the shamoji in cold water. Keeping the shamoji cool, clean, and slightly damp helps keep the rice from clumping on it. Throw away any rice that mashes onto the shamoji (a good reason for making more rice than you think you'll need). Keep separating and fanning the rice (yeah, you really need four hands to do this properly) until it is at or nearly at room temperature.
Nigiri-zushi
My first effort at sushi was ebi nigiri-zushi (not ama ebi—raw crustaceans are dangerous treats, and I would suggest only using farm-raised shrimp, which is expensive and difficult to find). It certainly looked simple enough at first glance: a boiled shrimp tail on a pad of rice. I will kill any possible suspense by admitting that my result was too big, too uneven in size, and sitting atop rice that is just too damned sticky.
First-glance simple is usually a wrong impression. Think Zen gardens: how hard can it be to rake lines into a patch of sand? Heh. Notice the simple appearance of most ebi in sushi bars: uniform, lying flat on the rice, rounded at the edges. The flat appearance is achieved by peeling the shrimp, cleaning them backwards (opening up the abdomen instead of along the notochord), and skewering them for cooking. I got lucky, but I opening the shrimp from the abdomen is an ideal way to slide open your hand. What worked best for me was peeling the shrimp (except fot the tails) and skewering the shrimp next. Use the thinnest bamboo skewers you can find, and insert the skewer right down the notochord channel. Run the skewer point all the way into the fleshy tail piece directly above the center of the tail fins. Then, split the shrimp on its abdominal side, taking care not to cut all the way through to the bamboo. Set a large pot of water to boil. When it reaches a full boil, drop in the shrimp for forty-five seconds. A full minute will be too much and may make the skewers impossible to remove without tearing the shrimp. Remove the shrimp from the boiling water directly into an ice water bath to stop the cooking process. Remove the skewers immediately and trim the ends of the ebi to echo the shape of the sushi rice.
I find the trimming difficult, philosophically, because it means throwing away perfectly good bits of cooked shrimp. One possible solution is keeping the leavings to add to temaki (hand rolls). I had intended to try this last time, but I ran out of rice and had too much sushi for the three of us, anyway.
The sushi rice rolls are fairly easy to make if the consistency of the rice is already correct and if you rinse your hands in cold water just before you handle the rice. You will probably need to wash your hands after forming each rice pad. By now, you are probably beginning to see why sushi chefs in Japan spend their first five years just handling rice. For each rice pad, scoop up a quantity about the size of a ping pong ball and form it into a flat-sided oval.
If, every time you try to form a sushi rice pad, the rice sticks to your fingers or refuses to form, you did not cool it properly. I recommend that you curse, stamp your foot, and try further drying and polishing the rice with the shamoji. If that doesn't work, give up on the nigiri and prepare sashimi. If the rice tastes okay, you can mix in a handful of halved grape tomatoes and blanched snowpeas for a colorful, tasty side dish. Or you can chuck the rice and go out for sushi.
On my second foray into the world of sushi, in addition to the ebi I also used halibut (hirame) and salmon (sake), two of my favorites. Once you've tried to cut clean, rectangular, uniform slices of prime fish for either nigiri-zushi or sashimi, you will see the real reason for the high cost of sushi in most restaurants. This is a wasteful process. You cannot use most of the flesh close to the skin or close to the bones; you cannot use bruised, separated, or otherwise discolored flesh; you cannot use flesh containing too much stringy fat. Your knife has to be extremely sharp and clean. I have managed the best results by following the same ground rules I use in preparing carpaccios:
- Use a high-quality, razor-sharp knife.
- Use only fresh fish.
- I know this sounds like it contradicts that last point, but: put the fish in the freezer about an hour before you attempt to slice it.
- Keep your cutting board clean.
- Rinse the knife in cold water frequently while slicing the fish.
- Handle the fish gingerly: bruises make it bitter as well as ugly.
- Save edible scraps and crooked cuttings for nori-maki or temaki.
- Remember, this is a visual art: style counts.
Place a tiny dollop of wasabi (about the size of a quarter of a pea) atop each rice pad and the place the fish or rice atop the pad.
I was far more pleased with my nigiri-zushi—better appearance, consistency, and quality of rice—the second time than the first.
Nori-maki
Nori-maki is the Lego™ of Japanese haute-cuisine: hardcore playing with food. I got lucky. My first try actually produced tasty, attractive nori-maki. I used sockey salmon (the strips leftover from the nigiri-zushi. I'm probably overdue for burning an offering at a shrine somewhere.
Once upon a time, finding the ingredients and tools for sushi-roll construction meant a foray into the nearest available Japanese or pan-Asian specialty market. Lately, nori-maki has become so popular that most major grocery chains in the US now carry nori sheets and makisu (the little bamboo mat you use to form the rolls).
In addition to the instructions I found in many popular cookbooks and on a vast array of Web sites, here are a few key lessons I learned while making nori-maki:
These rolls use a lot of rice—much more than I expected. A quarter-inch layer of sushi rice per roll (covering all but the last one-inch strip of the nori sheet) means that one cup of (dry, precooked measure) sushi rice will make two full-sheet rolls or four half sheet rolls. A half-sheet roll will be like the typical California roll: one full wrap of nori around rice and whatever else you've included. A full sheet produces a slightly fatter roll (about an inch and a half in diameter) with a spiral over lap of nori half-way through the rice. The cut nori-maki discs each look something like a colorful @ symbol.
Spread the rice with your fingers (don't forget to wash and dampen your hands with cold water before handling the rice). Tools will just make a mess of the job.
Nori is fairly stout material, but it does not handle sheer forces well. When you cut it, use a large chef's knife and cut by pressing down and rocking the blade. Slicing will tear the nori.
As in sexual matters, wetness is a crucial concern in nori-maki production.
Avoid getting the nori wet: it weakens and separates. Dry your hands before you handle the sheets and dry the knife you will use for cutting the nori sheets.
The knife you use to cut the roll has to be sharp, clean, cold, and damp for every cut. Repeat: every cut. Be sure the hand you use to hold the nori-maki is dry, however, or the nori is liable to stick to your fingers and separate from the roll. Keep a dishcloth or a wad of paper towels on hand as well as a bowl of ice water. After you slice the roll, your knife will be gummed up by the sushi rice. If you don't clean and chill the knife, your next cut will pinch or flatten the roll on one side.
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