As many of you know, my girlfriend is from a suburb of Tokyo. My life since meeting her has not only been enriched but it has been one of cultural expansion. I have finally learned to "taste" rice. I have even managed to make rice properly using a pressure cooker. I know, I know, all of my American friends are say "how can you mess up rice?"...
A little over a year ago, I thought the same thing. It took me but a brief time to learn the difference. I have long been a rice eater. I eat rice at least five days a week. I did this even before I met Grinny (not her real name, another cultural thing, I always refer to her by that here and never post her photos here). I, unlike a good number of the Japanese, prefer brown and wild rice. I used to just add water and boil it.
The first thing Grinny corrected was my failure to rinse the rice. She then introduced me to a rice cooker. It took little time to appreciate the ease of using the rice cooker. It seemed to always cook perfect rice. This was not the case. The reality was I still had no idea what properly cooked rice was. My taste buds had not even learned to tell the difference from old rice and fresh harvest rice.
Nonetheless, that was a year past and is not the point of this post. I have learned much about rice since then. I have also learned much about Japan and it's culture since then. 99% of what I have learned is from Grinny, the rest is from some of my Japanese colleges and one certain Mari. The point of this post is I have now moved onto sushi. This should scare any and all Japanese. I tried to use a book Grinny loaned me and the results were slightly worse than throwing water on a raging gasoline fire. This time I had help...
First, Grinny showed me how to mix the rice properly. This is not as simple as one would think. The rice must be mixed with the vinegar at a certain speed and tempo so that the rice cools and gets a certain "shine" to it. One must also be sure not to smash the rice. Grinny told me that it could take years to master this alone. (Lumpy wonders if there is enough time to even get it close to right in his life of which 42 years has lapsed.)
The other unavoidable issue was the ingredients. We are never going to get the proper items for real sushi in Cleveland, Ohio. Grinny and I had to "Americanize" our maki efforts.
Next, she demonstrated how to spread the rice is to be spread over the nori. This too is not as simple as it looks must be done with care and one cannot smash the rice. Lumpy also noticed that the rice sticks to his fingers much better than the nori.
Nonetheless, despite rice covered fingers, I did manage to spread the rice and even managed to psuedo-roll the concoction into maki. Too bad it is not real sushi though. (Lumpy still ate it though.)
Comments (1)
42!!! /me bows down. lol ... /me is hungry for rice now, but is no longer confident enough to cook it :/ .. glad to hear all is well with grinny :)
Posted by Joe | October 14, 2005 8:16 PM
Posted on October 14, 2005 20:16