Sushi: Where Rice Becomes Art
The success of takeout sushi in supermarkets makes it abundantly clear that sushi has risen to become a favorite food and top-selling item across many food venues. Americans from coast to coast have embraced this Japanese culinary tradition. Today's kids and and teens love sushi, attracted by the jewel-like colors, the tingle of wasabi and the gentle sweetness of the sushi rice.
Sushi pushes all the right buttons today: it's low in fat and calories, high in omega-3 fatty acids when featuring fresh fish, and easy to eat on the go. In virtually any foodservice environment, from supermarkets to colleges to corporate dining to restaurants, sushi will boost sales.
To sushi connoisseurs, the quality of the rice is as important as the freshness of the fish. The rice must be properly cooked and expertly seasoned with salt, sugar and rice vinegar in the right proportions. Cooling the cooked rice quickly helps give it a sought-after sheen. In Japan, an assistant often fans the rice manually as the sushi chef dresses it.
U. S.-grown japonica varieties—medium and short grain rice—have the clingy quality and pleasantly chewy texture essential to authentic sushi. Short grain tends to be stickier and softer. Either hold together beautifully when shaped, making it easy to assemble expert nigiri and maki types of sushi—with a little practice, of course. In the U.S. a "premium medium grain" rice is used most often, where in Japan, short grain rice is preferred.
For the most familiar type of nigiri sushi, a slice of raw fish is draped across a finger of seasoned rice, often with a dab of wasabi in between. Another type, temaki, meaning "hand roll," calls for encasing the rice and other ingredients in a seaweed cone, similar to an ice cream cone. Easier to make, and better suited to foodservice, is maki sushi, where seasoned rice and other ingredients are rolled into a seaweed-wrapped log with the help of a bamboo mat, then sliced into rounds. With maki sushi, you can get creative, providing diners both seafood and vegetarian options. Uramaki, an 'inside-out' roll where rice is on the outside often with a touch of sesame seeds, has become increasingly popular on today's menus. Change the seaweed to soy paper (daizu mame) and you can tone down the ocean flavor and add novel colors to this dish.
Pay attention to these technique tips when making maki sushi:
- Use only U.S.-grown short- or medium-grain rice.
- Toast the seaweed (nori) first to crisp it and heighten its flavor.
- Keep your hands moistened with vinegared water while working with the rice to keep it from sticking.
- Be sparing with the wasabi you put between rice and fish on nigiri sushi. You don't want to obliterate the flavor of the rice.
Japanese cuisine "is a cuisine of presentation, not transformation," writes Mia Detrick in her classic book Sushi (Chronicle Books). Nothing illustrates that observation better than sushi.
For more guidance, watch Chef Toni Sakaguchi prepare an assortment of sushi, including maki and uramaki sushi.