Recipe: Fried Shrimp Sushi Rolls

Making inside-out sushi rolls doesn’t have to be all that involved if you’ve got the basic materials and some plastic wrap on hand. Serve plain or decorated like fish to thrill your child (or your inner child), like I did with Bug’s bento lunch for Children’s Day. You can speed this up by using frozen fried shrimp and frozen rice, but a step-by-step recipe for making inside-out shrimp sushi rolls from scratch follows below.

Fried Shrimp Sushi Rolls

(adapted from the Japanese-language cookbook Okosama Lunch to Obento “Children’s Lunches and Bentos”)

For the fried shrimp:

a few shrimp, shelled but tail onfloursalt & pepper to taste1 egg, beaten1/2 cup panko Japanese bread crumbs (or regular Western breadcrumbs)vegetable oil for deep frying(special equipment: toothpicks or bamboo skewers, small pot for deep-frying)

For the rolls:

one large piece of nori (roasted seaweed for sushi), cut in halfone cup of cooked rice (short- or medium-grain)1 Tb of aonori (seaweed) or 2 Tb of green-colored furikake (flavored sprinkles for rice)1 Tb of sakura denbu or 2 Tb of pink- or orange-colored furikake (flavored sprinkles for rice)(special equipment: 1 sheet of plastic wrap or a “makisu” sushi rolling mat)

For the roll decoration:

1 quail egg, hard boiled and peeled (or substitute a regular chicken egg, sliced white cheese, kamaboko fish cake, etc.)small piece of nori (roasted seaweed) for the eyes and gills4 slices of cooked zucchini (or substitute raw cucumber)4 slices of cooked carrotmayonnaise for affixing edible decorations(special equipment: sharp scissors for cutting the nori shapes)

If you have frozen tempura shrimp, you can use that as a shortcut. If not, you’ll need to make your own fried shrimp from scratch.

For the fried shrimp:

1. Pat the shrimp dry and insert a toothpick or skewer down the middle lengthwise. If using long skewers, use kitchen scissors to snip off the excess skewer. This keeps the shrimp straight and prevents them from curling up during frying.

2. In three separate shallow dishes or pans, set up your breading station: mix together flour/salt/pepper in the first dish, beaten egg in the second, and panko bread crumbs in the third.

3.  Dip the shrimp in the flour mixture, tapping off excess. Then dip the shrimp in the beaten egg, then the bread crumbs, letting the excess fall off. Place on a rack while you finish breading the rest.

4. (If you want to save the shrimp for future speedy bento lunch prep, the breaded shrimp can be wrapped and frozen at this point. Just quick-fry them while frozen when you’re looking for a little extra something in a lunch.)

5. Heat enough vegetable oil in the pot for deep frying until it reaches 350 degrees F (180 degrees C). Fry the shrimp a few at a time until golden brown, about 2-3 minutes. Remove to a cooling rack lined with paper towels to drain. Once cool, carefully remove the toothpicks or bamboo skewers from the shrimp so you don’t have an unpleasant surprise when eating!

For the sushi rolls:

6. Split the cooked rice into separate bowls, stirring the aonori (or green furikake) into one and the sakura-denbu (or pink/orange furikake) into the other. Take a half-sheet of roasted nori seaweed and spread a thin layer of the colored rice on top. I left a small strip of nori without rice in the photo, but wound up trimming it off in the finished product.

7. Take a piece of plastic wrap and place the rice/nori rice-side down on the plastic wrap to enable the inside-out rolling without having rice stick everywhere.

8. Place the plastic-wrap side down on the rolling mat or the counter, and place one of the fried shrimp on the nori side. (If you have a makisu bamboo rolling mat, use this to help roll the shrimp inside of the nori and rice. If you don’t have a special rolling mat, just use the plastic wrap.)

9. Using steady, even pressure, roll the shrimp inside of the nori, simultaneously peeling away the plastic wrap from the far end when it’s in danger of being rolled up into the nori.

10. At this point, you can either use the rolls as is or further decorate them to look like fish. To serve as is, remove the plastic wrap from the outside and you’ve got the basic inside-out sushi roll.

To decorate the rolls:

11. While the roll is still wrapped in plastic wrap, dip a sharp knife in water and cut off the very end of the rolls. This gives a flat, straight end to the roll that forms the “fish face”. (What to do with the leftover food scraps? Either eat it as a snack or pack it up in the bento under other food.)

12. Remove the plastic wrap from the sushi roll and place the roll in your bento box, ready for decoration.

13. To form the scales: Cook the sliced carrots and zucchini either on the stovetop or in the microwave. (I used my microwave mini steamer from Daiso to cook both in under a minute, but you could simmer or saute them as you like.) Cut off about a quarter from the side of each slice of carrot/zucchini to form “fish scales”, and place three on each roll. I used a little dab of Gohan Desu Yo! seaweed paste to help the veggies stick to the rice.

14. Fold a small piece of spare nori in half, and use sharp scissors to cut out two crescent-shaped slivers (for “gills”) and two small circles (for “eyes”).

15. Cut the hard-boiled quail egg into slices, and pick out two slices that show the most yellow yolk. Place these on the roll to form “eyes”, using a little dab of mayonnaise (or seaweed paste, cream cheese, etc.) to help affix to the rice. If using a regular chicken egg, use the two smallest slices of egg white from each end to form the “eyes”. (Other white-colored substitutes for eyes could include sliced cheese, kamaboko fish cake, etc. What else would work? Let us know in comments!). Place a nori “gill” just behind each “eye”. The moisture of the rice should keep the dry nori affixed.

16. Cut the remaining carrot and zucchini slices into little circles a little smaller than the egg “eye”, and affix to the egg yolk with a dab of mayonnaise. Place the smallest nori circles on top of those to complete the “eye.”

FURTHER READING:

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What it was like to run a popular sushi restaurant in New York City, with memories

Two itamae (chefs) prepping before the store opens, circa 2001.

[If you have been following this blog or my Facebook page, you may know that I haven’t been doing too well. I was going to write yet another moan-y thing about my radiation therapy and stuff, but instead, I thought I’d end the year by posting this, an edited and expanded version of something I wrote a little while ago. I hope you have fun reading it, especially if you have ever run a restaurant, or lived in New York. Ah New York, I still miss you. Anyway - here’s to a much better 2014!]

I never ran a restaurant myself, so most of my knowledge on this matter is second hand. My mother ran a very successful restaurant in midtown Manhattan called Tsukiji Sushisay. In addition my stepfather was the accountant for several Japanese restaurants in NYC. I did however work the front desk for a few months, and helped out over the years with things like translating legal documents, making brochures, or creating their website. I translated the menu to English, and even taught basic ‘sushi-counter customer-service English’ to many of the chefs. “I’m sorry, we don’t have spicy tuna.” is one phrase I remember teaching them.

I also want to note, that I feel OK writing this because the restaurant closed its doors in 2002, and various statutes of limitations or whatever have run out. ^^;

I think running any successful restaurant in a highly competitive place like New York City is extremely tough. It can be exhilarating, and a lot of fun, but it is very, very stressful. When my mother retired at age 60, she was totally worn out. She suffered from high blood pressure and migranes constantly for the last couple of years. Still, she says it was the most fun period of her life. And, the restaurant was hugely successful. It only seated 92, but it did 2 to 3 seatings at lunch and 3 to 4 at dinner, on a regular basis. On truly crazy nights it could even do 5.

So here are some things that a sushi restaurant goes though. Some are general restaurant things, others are specific to running a sushi restaurant.

The biggest issue with staff in a restaurant is: visa issues, and training. My mom’s restaurant made every effort to do it all on the up and up, but in some restaurants that was not the case for sure. An INS raid was always an exciting occurrence. (Right up there with a Dept of Health inspection. Incidentally, the restaurant got perfect scores on that count several times.)

There were 3 types of staff in a sushi restaurant: kitchen staff and busboys; chefs (the itamae); and waitstaff + front of house. As with most NY restaurants, kitchen staff was mostly Hispanic (in this restaurant’s case mostly Dominican). That part was actually the easiest since the work itself did not need a whole lot of training, and if someone dropped out the ‘boss’ of the kitchen staff could always arrange for someone else to come the next day. Plus they all had valid work visas - no one with a non-valid visa was even considered.

Waitstaff/front of house was somewhere in between - they weren’t hired unless they had valid visas, but if someone quit there was no ‘waitstaff network’ like with the kitchen guys. Just about all Japanese restaurants run continuous classifieds in local Japanese papers for this reason. Fortunately, the restaurant had a great head waiter who was there for almost the whole time the restaurant was in operation, plus a couple of stalwart veterans. About 2/3rds of the waitstaff at any given time were Japanese or could speak Japanese. The front desk could all speak Japanese (and English too of course) - since more than 1/2 the customers were Japanese that was pretty important.

(This is how I got to work there for a few months actually…someone suddenly quit, my mom couldn’t find a replacement, and she begged me to work at the front desk for a while. I was sort of in-between things so I did it. It was a great experience…but it taught me to never, ever think about opening my own restaurant unless I had a huge amount of backing and preparation. ^_^)

The most difficult part was the chefs. As I explained here: Sushi: What is it like to train to be a master sushi chef? it takes many years to become a sushi chef that can be entrusted with a really, really busy station. So that meant the itamae had to come from Japan in most cases, since they had to have the skills to just jump in and start working. That meant constant visa issues - the restaurant had an immigration lawyer on retainer (besides a regular law firm for other stuff). The INS did not really consider ‘chef’ to be a unique trained job, so it was always a tossup whether someone would get approved for a work visa or not. In some cases, if the application was made for a ‘manager’ or ‘sales person’ it would go through easier. IMHO this is just a bias for white collar jobs…I mean, a sales guy doesn’t need 3 to 10 years of intensive training. But I digress.

There were a few cases of local hires (who were hired as kitchen staff) getting trained to become chefs, but most of them dropped out because it was too tough. A couple did get halfway trained…and then went to work somewhere else. One guy did stick to it though, and he’s still working for the company at another restaurant in Japan. One Chinese guy was very promising…but it turned out he was lying about his visa status and had faked papers, so he disappeared when that was discovered.

This was fairly easy. There are several wholesalers in NY that kind of control the Japanese food and seafood supplies. As long as you paid your bills regularly, they loved you. Since the restaurant was very successful and properly run (you’d be surprised at how many restaurants are in the red because the owners/management skim off profits, or don’t know basic bookkeeping, or get ripped off by unscrupulous employees etc…) that was never an issue.

Sometimes, some seller off the street so to speak would come with something they wanted the restaurant to try. One time for instance someone came with a big box of matsutake mushrooms grown in Portland, OR. But most supplies came from the big wholesalers like JFC, Yama Seafood, etc.

Periodically a whole tuna would come in, and all the chefs would help with breaking it down. That was quite a sight. I wish I’d taken pictures.

Also, since the restaurant was very successful, it was able to make deals on things, like a very nice sake direct from the brewery, that was exclusive to them in the U.S. at a pretty good price. I wonder if any of the customers realized they were getting sake that would cost like 2x that anywhere else, even in Japan…

One of the biggest headaches in the day to day running was the smooth functioning of equipment, especially the air conditioning or heating (partly due to the problems caused by the building renovations). If the air conditioning failed in midsummer in NY…well you can imagine the complaints from the customers. Air conditioning maintenance was a monthly thing.

And garbage pickup..that was an interesting thing too. I don’t know about now, but at the time a food business had to pay a private contractor for garbage pickup. And, well the head of the company my mother hired (a lovely but slightly scarred man) was like, connected to certain families. But anyway…just another interesting aspect.

One time, my mom was visiting me for a week in December after I moved to Switzerland. She got a call in the middle of the night our time - the sprinkler system had broken due to one of those New York cold snaps (it was related to the construction work….see below) and the restaurant had gotten flooded. The chairs, the carpet, etc were all ruined. She had to fly home ASAP. The restaurant was back in business in less than a week though.

The building was sold to new owners a few years into the lease, and they didn’t want a canopy outside the restaurant entrance…so there was a big brouhaha over that. They also wanted to close up the entrance to the restaurant from the lobby. The biggest issue was when they started major renovations of the building, all around the restaurant. The dust and noise were a huge headache for several years. The moral of this story is: when leasing a restaurant space, have a very good lawyer look it over carefully, to deal with all contingencies.

A restaurant can’t survive of course unless there are customers. The restaurant had a lot of loyal regulars. Restaurants love regulars, and treat them with care. One timers don’t get treated badly, but if there’s a choice between Customer A who has been coming to the restaurant for years every week vs. Customer B who’s there for the first time….guess who gets priority.

There are three things that you can do as a customer to really annoy a fine-dining restaurant, besides the obvious things like be rude to the waitstaff or not leave a tip.

Be late or forget to cancel your reservation. This is by far the biggest annoyance. You do that repeatedly, you are likely to be blacklisted by a popular restaurant. We actually did that to one very prominent and wealthy person. He threatened to badmouth the restaurant to all his important friends, and my mother was like ‘go ahead, make my day’. (She is a typical small Japanese lady by the way, all 152 cm of her.) After a few weeks he called her up to apologize and ask to be let back in.Overstay your time, especially if you see people waiting in line to be seated. I know that you want to linger after a meal - and you have the right to - but please try to be considerate of other customers too. The aim of a restaurant is to try to please all their customers as equally as they can. (And regulars generally do not do this - some even seemed to get the feeling they were part of the family, and would ask if they should hurry up and stuff. They didn’t have to do that of course.)Ask to be re-seated just because you see empty tables/seats - and be offended if you are refused. If the restaurant is successful, it’s likely that those tables are booked up and in 15 minutes they’ll be filled. Taking reservations is an exercise in logistics - you have to figure out who can be seated where, and how long they will take, and so forth. You’re doing this while looking at the seating chart all the time. So when customers ask to be reseated it can really mess things up - especially when a party of 2 asks to go to a 4-seat table.

My mom’s restaurant was part of a chain really - the parent company still operates about 30 sushi restaurants in Japan (but no more overseas…the owner got freaked out by 9/11, since he was in NY that day, and decided to not operate overseas anymore.) So the restaurant’s finances were all aboveboard and everything. This was not the case for some of my stepfather’s clients. In one case, a pretty successful Japanese restaurant’s profits were basically all going up the owner’s nose, and for the upkeep of his girlfriend (he had a wife and kids, naturally). Or another of his clients almost went out of business because the owner/chef despised invoices so much, he’d like make little bundles out of them and put them in a box. (My stepfather called them “invoice-nigiri” because they were like little rice balls. ^_^) Luckily for that guy my stepfather saved him in time and he later sold his restaurant and retired happily.

To get along well in the NY restaurant scene you do need to do some schmoozing with other restauranteurs and chefs and critics and the like. I think this is where my mother had a leg up on other Japanese restaurants - she spoke pretty good English, and had (still has) this wonderful bubbly personality that just draws people to her. So she was able to do the schmooze with various famous chefs and restauranteurs that are still very prominent in the NY restaurant scene. If you asked them they may still remember her. I know at least one of them asked her to come work for him.

The schmooze is important for making customers feel happy too. The restaurant had a very happy atmosphere. My mother, when she was on her game (and not grumpy due to migranes and fatigue) was really a sparkling hostess. The head waiter guy was always good, as were the veteran waitresses. The chefs, although their English levels varied a lot, were trained to always be polite and pleasant (although some managed it better than others). I think it made the customers just feel good to be in such a place.

Celebrities showed up all the time of course — this is pretty normal for a popular NY restaurant. That was fun, but not as big a deal as you might expect. There are some pretty crazy stories involving very rich people or celebrities….but I don’t know if it’s good taste to talk about those so I’ll leave it at that. Anyway, celebrities do add to the decor, if you know what I mean.

A restaurant opened on the other side of the road from my mom’s restaurant. They had a much nicer space - bigger, and it was on the corner (my mom’s restaurant was in between avenues). It was a caviar and seafood restaurant or something. The decor inside looked beautiful. But, it was almost always empty. The guy who ran the place (the manager or owner, I was not sure which) used to wander over to my mom’s restaurant when they were in full swing at lunchtime and the customer line was spilling out to the street, and gaze into the window mournfully. Once day he finally came in to ask her how they were so successful while his place was empty.

I don’t remember what she said…but it’s a whole lot of things as I’ve tried to describe, plus a bit of luck and magic.

As I noted at the beginning, the restaurant closed its doors in 2002. It wasn’t because the restaurant had started to fail - far from it, they were packed almost until the end - and although the lease for the premises was up for renewal they could have done so easily. The fundamental reason unfortunately was that the owners got seriously freaked out by 9/11. Coincidentally, the company president and 2 of the top executives had been in New York on 9/11. That was the image they carried with them of New York back home, and they basically lost interest in maintaining the New York branch. Another reason was that my mother desperately wanted to retire. She was totally exhausted, knew it was affecting her on the job, and just wanted to rest. (Soon after retiring she was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, which may have been triggered by the stress she went through, and had to have several hospital stays and surgeries because of it.)

I found an old Chowhound thread about the closing of the restaurant, which is full of erroneous ‘information’ about the reasons for the closing. I’m also aware that the restaurant that took over the premises lied to people about it being the ‘same management’ (including to Michelin inspectors). Eh.

The great head waiter that I described in the text was called Tanabe-san. He was an avid marathon runner, and ran the New York Marathon every year. Despite being a health fanatic, he died of cancer a couple of years after the restaurant closed, at the ege of 48.

Finally, about the two itamae (chefs) pictured in the photo above: The one on the left, Mera-san, is still working for the same company at their Kyoto restaurant; the head chef there is another former New York store alumnus called Ito-san (no relation).

And the one on the right, Koyama-san, took over his family’s sushi restaurant in Ibaragi prefecture after his father, also an itamae, retired. Unfortunately Koyama-san’s restaurant and town were damaged by the March 11, 2011 Great Eastern Japan Earthquake. The interior of the store was almost totally destroyed, although the building remained standing. The bigger damage they suffered though was the inability to use any local fish due to the radiation leakage from the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant. He was always able to deal with things with humor, and it was no different after the earthquake. He said he hastily grabbed the two most expensive bottles of sake on his shelves. He breathed a big sigh of relief - then all the the shelves, and everything on them - sake, dinnerware, everything - came crashing down around him. The way he told it was so funny, even though he’d just lost so much. He’s still in business despite everything, and keeps plugging along.

I figure that anyone reading this who recognizes the names of those itamae, especially Koyama-san who was the head chef in the last years of the restaurant, knows where it was, and that’s enough. ^_^

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From what age it safe to give sushi or sashimi to kids?

As we enter midsummer in the Northern hemisphere, chances are you’re going out for sushi more than in the winter since it’s relatively light on the stomach. But summer heat also means you need to be a bit more careful about food safety. While sushi does not just mean raw fish, a lot of it is raw; plus, sashimi does involve slices of raw fish So, how safe is it to give raw fish sushi an sashimi to small children? At what age should you start?

Japanese parenting magazines and websites recommend that you do not feed raw fish products to very young children. Their immature digestive systems can’t handle things that more mature, toughened digestive systems can.

Most sources agree that you should definitely not feed raw or undercooked fish products to babies who aren’t on solid food yet. (Japanese moms typically give their kids who are being weaned cooked, shredded fish along with other baby-friendly food.)

After kids are on solid food, some parents have no problem letting them have raw fish. The generally recommended age at which kids can eat some kinds of raw fish varies from around age 2 1/2 to 3, all the way up to school age or age 6.

The safety of raw seafood varies by type. The least safe raw seafood products for immature or compromised digestive systems are shellfish, which can get contaminated very easily. THis should rule out non-sushi raw shellfish like raw clams and oysters too. Freshwater fish, salmon and ‘blue’ fish (the oily fish with blueish skins like mackerel) should also be held back until the kids are older according to most recommendations.

To address one fish in particular: Fresh (raw) salmon sushi is very popular in the United States and many other places, but it’s not so popular in Japan. Salmon often has parasites, which have to be dealt with before the fish is suitable for consumption. (Cooking kills these parasites.) In addition, traditionally raw salmon was believed to have an oily, unpleasant taste. Most salmon consumed in Japan is still salted; smoked salmon is popular too. Untreated salmon is usually cooked before eating.

Tuna (maguro) and bonito (katsuo, aka skipjack tuna) are considered to be the easiest to digest, and nominally safe for kids. However, tuna in particular is high in mercury these days, so should be eaten sparingly by everyone. Bonito/katsuo is often served seared on the surface (tataki) so it may be a bit safer than totally raw fish for little kids.

If you are serving raw-fish sushi or sashimi at home to small children and you still want them to start enjoying the texture and flavor, it’s recommended to lightly cook the surface of sashimi slices by searing them quickly in a hot frying pan, or swishing them a few timesin boiling water, shabu-shabu-style. Their older siblings and parents can enjoy the raw fish as-is.

There are many cooked sushi items of course, such as tamagoyaki (omelette), boiled shrimp, kanpyo (dried and simmered gourd strips) and so on, as well as vegetables like cucumber and radish sprouts. Cooked sushi or sushi made with vegetables is ok for kids who are on solid food. There’s a lot of cooked sushi to enjoy: most makimono (rolls) are made with cooked neta or vegetables, or just contain a little bit of tuna (tekkamaki).

One more thing to keep in mind though: Sushi rice is high in salt and sugar, and a lot of cooked neta (neta is the stuff that goes on or in the rice) is also highly seasoned. For instance, ikura or salmon caviar is salmon eggs marinated in a very salty soy sauce. In Japan both sushi and sashimi are regarded as occasional treats, mainly due to the expense of really good sashimi or sushi-grade fish. It’s probaby best to follow that way of thinking. (I’ve been asked if sushi is ‘health food’ or ‘good for a diet’ periodically; I’d say no.)

The recommendations for small children to avoid raw fish applies to raw or very rare meat too. Following a spate of food poisonings in 2011, there was a big campaign to inform parents and kids about the dangers of eating raw meat. For instance, the Korean chopped raw beef dish yukhoe (called yukke in Japan) is very popular in Japan, but following a spate of food poisoning incidents, including some deaths, in 2011, it’s been recommended that people in general should only have it from reputable sources, and that kids should avoid it.

While no government entity recommends avoiding raw vegetables, you may want to be a bit wary of feeding very small children raw sprouts. Many of the recent e.coli outbreaks have been caused by vegetable sprouts, such as the widespread outbreak in Germany in 2011. See: Sprouts: What You Should Know.

Incidentally, until the postwar period it was considered to be unhealthy and undesirable to serve any raw, untreated vegetables in Japan. Vegetables were almost always cooked, pickled, salted and so on befure eating. This has totally changed now of course - raw salads and the like are very popular.

In any case, I hope this has been helpful to you. If you have any questions about specific types of sushi and the like, let me know in the comments.

(This is an answer I originally wrote on the Q and A social media site Quora. I’ve edited and expanded on my original answer here, since I thought it we of interest to JustHungry readers.)

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Pondering two food documentaries: Jiro Dreams of Sushi and Kings of Pastry

If you’re a fan of Just Hungry, not to mention fond of Japanese food in general, chances are you have seen Jiro Dreams of Sushi (IMDB, English Wikipedia; available on Blu-ray, and I highly recommend seeing it in hi-def), a documentary film about Jiro Ono, sushi master and proprietor of Sukiyabashi Jiro, a tiny sushi-ya that has been awarded 3 stars by the Michelin Guide.

Ever since it was released in late 2011 people keep asking me what I think about it. I didn’t get a chance to see it until it came out on video last year, since English documentary films about sushi masters don’t get released in theatres in semi-rural France.

You would think that it would be right up my alley - a movie about a Japanese sushi master. It is beautifully filmed, with tons of mouthwatering closeups of sushi. And the star, Jiro Ono, is a fascinating character - a man who had dedicated his whole life to just one thing, perfecting sushi.

Yet, and regretfully, it left me rather cold. I think the problem is that the film makers were far too distant from their subject matter, far to reverent. There were several questions left unasked, such as - why was his wife just shown in old photographs? Was she still alive, or had she passed away? (Not an unreasonable thing to wonder about since at the time of filming Mr.Ono himself is 85.) His two sons continued in his footsteps as sushi chefs, the younger one with a store of his own, and the older one working at the ‘honten’ (the original, main store) with his father. Did they ever rebel or have other plans? There’s only some vague reference to the older son wanting to be a car racer or something when he was a boy, but nothing about his dreams or aspirations as an adult. It’s like they assumed that some things were just the ‘done thing’ in Japan, and therefore they didn’t question them, or something along those lines.

To be honest, I can’t at the moment recall a single documentary made about Japan by people who are not Japanese that manage to get to the heart of their subject matter in a satisfying manner, and unfortunately Jiro Dreams of Sushi is no exception. I personally think a fly-on-the-wall type of approach, where they just filmed a day or two at Sukiyabashi Jiro, would have been far more effective in giving us an insight into Jiro Ono and why this tiny little sushi-ya in a building basement is so lauded by Michelin and other foreign critics. (As to if Sukiyabashi Jiro is acknowledged in Japan amongst Japanese chefs and critics as the unquestioned ‘best’ - well no, it isn’t. I wrote about this to some extent on Quora.) If anything, the most interesting aspects of this film for me are the reverent approach of the film makers, and exactly why Jiro Ono has become a celebrity outside of Japan over other sushi masters.

Incidentally, Jiro Dreams of Sushi is the Movie Of the Week on iTunes, so you can rent it for 99 cents. Despite my rather negative comments I do recommend it, if only for the gorgeous food porn.

If you like documentaries about food and craftsmen doing their best work, I highly recommend a far less pretentious documentary called Kings of Pastry (IMDB, Wikipedia, available on DVD). This follows three French pastry chefs who are preparing for the 2008 edition of the Meilleurs Ouvriers de France (MOF) or Best Artisans of France competition in the pastry making category, that takes place every 4 years in Lyon.

This is not nearly as beautifully presented as Jiro Dreams of Sushi - it sort of has the look of a home video shot on camcorders, to be honest - but the inherent drama is so compelling, and so much fun, that I find it a lot more enjoyable. It has a natural focal point in the competition, which is truly nail biting stuff. The three chefs featured, especially Jacquy Pfeiffer of the French Pastry School in Chicago, are all personable and easy to root for. And the pastry creations are quite wonderful, although some of the designs seem to border on the kitschy.

What it shares with Jiro Dreams of Sushi is that it shows how dedicated artisans who practice their craft for years on end, can schieve a high level of perfection. These days fewer and fewer people seem to dedicate themselves to perfecting something for years on end, and it’s good to be reminded that in many cases, true excellence can only come from practice, practice, practice.

Kings of Pastry is a load of fun and I highly recommend it.

By the way, [SPOILER ALERT] only one of the featured chefs wins the coveted MOF award during this competition, and I got to visit his patisserie a couple of months ago. I’ll tell you about it soon.

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Sushi Secrets Cookbook Giveaway

I am partnering with my friends Tuttle Publishing to giveaway five (5) copies of Sushi Secrets: Easy Recipes for the Home Cook by Marisa Baggett. There will be five (5) winners whom will each receive one (1) copy of Sushi Secrets: Easy Recipes for the Home Cook by Marisa Baggett (US$18.95 suggested retail price).

In 2003, Marisa Baggett boarded a Greyhound bus with a one-way ticket to Los Angeles and $300 in her pocket to study at the California Sushi Academy. After graduation, Marisa moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where her passion for sushi, her southern background and determination to use local, sustainable ingredients resulted in the development of unconventional and delectable sushi!

In Sushi Secrets, Marisa shares with you both traditional and nontraditional sushi, all of them delicious and all of them very easy to make. Marisa includes surefire recipes for making perfect sushi rice, tips on how to find and buy the freshest seafood and sustainability and how to achieve it at home. Plus, with her background as a pastry chef, Marisa has created a dessert chapter that will make your mouth water! With this book you’ll be ready to prepare a host of sushi and sashimi recipes and it gives loads of hints on how to slash otherwise lengthy prep times. From the traditional favorites to new and unique combinations, Sushi Secrets will have you rolling delicious sushi like a pro in no time at all.

Recipes include:
Scallop Carpaccio Sashimi
Avocado and Pomegranate Nigiri
Pork Thin Rolls with Gingered Cherries
Pickled Okra Thick Rolls
Short Ribs Sushi Bowl
“Cat”erpillar Rolls
Faux Eel Hand Rolls
Fudge Wontons with Peanut Dipping Sauce
Fried Cherry Hand Pies

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Monday photos: Last chance sushi at Narita Airport Terminal 1

It’s been yet another bad week for me, which is why I haven’t been around - again. Last Friday (December 2nd), I was rehospitalized due to my surgery wound getting badly infected. I know it was the right decision, yet being stuck in a hospital room is such a depressing thing. And the food, the awful food, does not make things any better. To make things worse, a fever and some kind of reaction to the antibiotics I had to take to combat the infection had totally robbed me of my appetite.

As I lay there in my small, chilly room alone, trying to find a comfortable position on the hard narrow bed, I wondered sadly if I would ever find food interesting again. Even things that were actually edible looking on my dinner trays, like fresh fruit, had lost their appeal. Everything smelled awful.

Then I started to dream, about the food I used to like. I don’t know if people normally have dreams with smells, but I could smell ramen (Sapporo style chicken-and-pork, flavored simply with salt) soup, and yakitori being cooked on a charcoal grill, and the sharp sweet odor of almost too-ripe strawberries. In my somewhat delirious state, I was hallucinating about food.

The food I thought about the most was sushi, specifically the one that I like to call Last Chance Sushi. This is served by a small sushi-ya, Kyokatsu, that is located within the restricted zone of Terminal 1 at Narita airport. They’ve positioned themselves well, and their storefront signs say it all.

Every time I leave Japan, always from Terminal 1, I just have to get some sushi from Kyotatsu. I always get a takeout box rather than eating in. Slowly munching my way through the sushi pieces as I wait at the gate helps me pass the time as I combat the depression I feel as I wait for my plane, the plane the will take me away from Japan again. When will I eat good sushi again? Soon, I promise myself, soon.

I have such mixed feelings about Japan. The food and the fun and my immediate family draw me back, keep me tied to it. Family problems and numerous sundry stresses draw me away and ultimately contribute to the decision to live elsewhere. But ultimately, it is my homeland, and I can never change that.

Most of us don’t know when our last flight away from this world we live in is scheduled to depart, unless we’re being executed by the state. But if we did, wouldn’t it be nice to have a last chance sushi place to visit, just before you board? Perhaps I was being rather morbid, but these were the types of thoughts that filled my mind last week.

I’m so glad I’m back home again.

(And a related question, though I may have asked this before: if you knew you were ‘going away’ forever, what kind of restaurant would your Last Chance place be and what would you eat there?)

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Removable and will not leave a mark on your walls.

'Fotolia' trademark will be removed when printed.

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Printed on-demand in the United States Your order will ship within 3 business days, often sooner. Some orders require the full 3 days to allow dark colors and inks to fully dry prior to shipping. Quality is worth waiting an extra day for!

Removable and will not leave a mark on your walls.

'Fotolia' trademark will be removed when printed.

Our catalog of over 10 million images is perfect for virtually any use: school projects, trade shows, teachers classrooms, colleges, nurseries, college dorms, event planners, and corporations of all size.

Price:

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