zen of fish

Last night, I finished reading Zen of Fish by Trevor Corson. It's a look inside sushi in america, from the perspective of students at a sushi academy, interspersed with information about the fish used in sushi, and the methods of preparation.

I'm not sure of the technical term for his style but it is one of the only non-fiction types that I can easily read - kind of like a really good Sunday magazine in-depth article.

A few things I learned:

- sashimi is just fish, no rice
- you aren't supposed to use chopsticks with nigiri (which is fish and rice)
- you are supposed to dip nigiri in the soy sauce fish first, not rice first (and if you are caucasian and visit Japan, you'll probably get rice tightly composed so it doesn't fall apart when you do put it in rice first)
- octopus have brains in each of their tentacles
- in Japan, wasabi is added to the rice in the right proportion for the fish being served. It's an american invention to add lots of wasabi to soy sauce and then drench the sushi in it.
- the popularity of tekka or toro (aka tuna) is also an american invention, introduced to Japan after world war 2. Traditionally, sushi incorporates lots of different fish prepared in many different ways. So it's not just the mercury or the overfishing that are reasons to seek out other types of sushi.
- if you want the chef to serve you what he or she thinks you will enjoy, you sit at the sushi bar and say omakase, which means as you wish.

Corson has a sushi blog (well, archive of past blog posts) and has another general blog called the Scrawling Claw.