And that's about it.
Prior to today, I have cooked sushi a couple of times. It turned pretty well. At least I enjoyed it. In retrospect, I'm pretty sure I probably did most things wrong, like how I sliced the fish, for example.
Today we had the opportunity to work with one of the original Iron Chefs himself, Masaharu Morimoto. Morimoto has a new book and he did a demo at BU in the evening of recipes from the book.
I think the day started with people in the class feeling a little bit anxious, wondering what chef Masaharu was going to be like and how it would be working with one of the new breed of celebrity chefs. This was augmented a bit by the entourage of people who arrived with chef Masaharu (assistant chefs, promotional people and even some press).
But, I think chef Masaharu put people at ease pretty quickly. He was calm and demonstrated a quick sense of humor, despite the fact that English is not his primary language. (I always think humor is one of the more difficult things to translate across cultures and languages. And yet, laughing together is one of the quickest ways for people to bond.)
We quickly got to work, as there was quite a bit of prep work to be done for the evening's demonstration. We started with chef Masaharu demonstrating how to slice fish for sushi. I think most of us were in awe of his skills and technique. I know I was.
First off, I had knife envy. It is no secret that I have something of a knife fetish, I admit it. I also tend to prefer Japanese knives for their feel: they're balanced differently and they tend to be lighter than German or French knives. Chef Masaharu had a beautiful Japanese Yanagi-ba knife with handles made from deer antlers. This style of knife is unique to Japanese knives and features a very long and thin, but very sturdy blade. Additionally, unlike European style knives, the blade is only beveled on one side (or at least one side is beveled considerably more than the other). This knife if ideal for making precise and clean slices of fish for sushi and sashimi.Second, to state the obvious, his technique was masterful. Each slice of the knife blade was as precise as the previous one and each slice of fish was precisely the same size and thickness as the previous one. This seems simple, but let me tell it is not. Moreover, the slices of fish were extremely thin. To produce this not only requires the correct technique but also requires a very sharp knife. If either of these things is lacking, you end up hacking the fish rather then slicing it. This is bad.
When it became our turn, I struggled with slicing the fish. After a couple of hacks, one of chef Masaharu's assistant chefs demonstrated the technique for me again. Seeing him do it while describing it made me realize why I was having such a hard time getting the technique down. It was almost exactly opposite of how I am used to slicing food. Let me explain.
Say I want to slice a carrot or a chicken breast. I will lay the tip end of the knife on the far right side of the item with the tip titled down towards the cutting board, and then push the knife forward and down, away from my body, to slice through the food. Additionally, my off hand will serve to hold the item in place while I slice off the end. Or put another way, my off hand is holding the item being sliced rather than the piece of food I just sliced off. The slices of food "come out" to the right on the other side of the knife from my off hand.
When slicing fish for sushi, the technique is almost completely reversed.
First, to slice the fish you lay the butt end of the knife on the fillet with the tip of the knife tilted up and away from you. You then pull the knife towards you and down, in a sort of semi-circular motion. In this way, the tip of the knife is the last part of the knife to pass through the food. Second, rather than using your off hand to hold the fish fillet as you slice pieces off of it, you use it to secure the newly formed slice of fish. So, instead of slices of fish coming off of the knife to the right (as with the carrot), they come off of the knife to left, into your off hand (presuming you are right handed).
Once I realized this, my slices did improve. But, quite frankly, I still wasn't very good at it. Somehow it felt unnatural to me, even though I could clearly see that this method produces beautiful pieces of sashimi. This is definitely an area that I can work on and improve.
I have to say, there are certain foods which I will happily pay another person to prepare for me, Sushi is one of those foods.
As I mentioned above, the day ended with chef Masaharu doing a demonstration for a group of about 70 or so people. The dishes he made were definitely not your traditional Japanese cuisine. There is no other way to describe what he did in terms other than to say it was "fusion." And, not just any fusion, but in this case, a fusion of Japanese and Italian cuisines. I know, that sounds like an odd pairing, but here is what he made.
First was Daikon Fettucine with a tomato-basil sauce. Here the noodles were not made from a dough, but from stripes of daikon radishes and were sauced with a very traditional Italian tomato sauce.
He also made a crispy tuna sashimi pizza and then finished the demo off with sugared salmon.
All in all, it was a good day and an interesting menu.
