Sushi

I don't find sushi boring at all, at least not good sushi. My favorites are uni with quali's egg yolk, toro, hamachi, and white tuna. Most sushi restaurants make some very inventive rolls, which I enjoy, but I don't find them any better than a good piece of one of my favorites (listed above) on rice, or solo. Sometimes I order hamachi don, slices of hamachi (yellowtail) over sushi rice.

Some of the inventive rolls I've enjoyed were a roll of deep fried oysters with avocado, a negi hamachi make topped with spicy salmon and bonito flakes, and deep fried soft shell crab. There are others, but I don't remember all the ingredients, some containing amadei (tile fish), maguro, and mackerel. I don't really go for eel. Salmon skin rolls are Ok.

Sushi is my favorite food. I think I could eat it every night and not get tired of it.

I dont enjoy seaweed, most sushi I eat is a bed of rice with a piece of fish on it. When you go to a good Sushi place that has good Tuna (maguro) it is incredible to eat.

The rolls are also great and provide balance to the fish and rice. Some of my favorites:
spider rolls (soft shell crab)
philadelphia roll (salmon with cream cheese)
crunch roll (shrimp tempura)
rock n' roll roll (salmon wrapped in cucumber)

The cool thing about Sushi is the variety. Find a place, get to know the Sushi chef and each time you go in order a couple of things you like and then ask him to serve you whatever hs is recommending / whatever is freshest.

Have fun.

spo1977,
Sushi/Sashimi is one of the most diverse types of cuisine!
There are literally dozens of fin/shell fish that can be served in at least a hundred different ways, raw, partially cooked, cooked and numerous variations of each, now that is variety!
It sounds as though the restaurant(s) that you have been to are run of the mill offering the big three(Tuna, Yellowtail and Salmon).
Where do you live?

red4life

Can someone clarify:

sashimi-is that the raw fish?
sushi- is that like a California roll?

quote:

Originally posted by Bella Donna:
Can someone clarify:

sashimi-is that the raw fish?
sushi- is that like a California roll?

Hi Bella Donna, hope you're well.

Sushi is served with rice. Sashimi is just the raw fish, with no rice.

quote:

Originally posted by red4life:
spo1977,
Sushi/Sashimi is one of the most diverse types of cuisine!
There are literally dozens of fin/shell fish that can be served in at least a hundred different ways, raw, partially cooked, cooked and numerous variations of each, now that is variety!
It sounds as though the restaurant(s) that you have been to are run of the mill offering the big three(Tuna, Yellowtail and Salmon).
Where do you live?

red4life

Red, where are you in So Cal? Any places you recommend?

I am in the San Gabriel Valley and frequent the Little Tokyo restaurant in San Dimas.
I like this restaurant because of it's variety, here is a sample of some of the types of fin fish Sushi that i have had: Halibut Fin, Half Beak, Spanish Mackeral, Pompano, Flying Fish, Sardines, Amberjack, White Seabass, Barracuda, Striped Bass and Wahoo, in addition to the usual fishes that one may find. In regards to shellfish, i have enjoyed the following served live, Soft Shell Crabs, Sea Urchin, Different varieties of Scallops and Clams, Lobster, Sea Snails, Conch, Cockle and Sweet Shrimp along with several others.

If you like variety, it is a very nice place imo! Let me know if you are ever in the area and maybe we can meet for some Sushi & Saki(Cold of Course )

red4life

quote:

Originally posted by Bella Donna:
Can someone clarify:

sashimi-is that the raw fish?
sushi- is that like a California roll?

'<(0:0)>' hello, kitty! May I?

You are on the right path, although there are variations within the scenario you propose. There is such thing as nigiri, or two piece sushi, as opposed to conventional, 6 piece serving.

\)^0^(/


It just happens I had sushi last night and guess what? I have pics.

Monk fish liver.

Toro roll and unagi.


Spicy lobster hand roll.

Tuna salad.


I had Sapporo with it all.... and Cal Sauvignon blanc too.

i like sushi alot,

but never had absolutly sofisticating suhi in restaurant, this is the reason i eat sushi almost only at home.
the reasons are:
- it starts with the rice, most use califirnia-raised rice, wich isnt bad but isnt really good!
- the rice-vinegar, non restaurant care about the quality of this ingridience and the differenc between a industrial vinegar and the one from the manufacture murayama is huge.
- most restaurants don't use the ceder-bowl to stir the rice adding the salt-sugar-vinegar-mix,
and forget that the bowl is not just a bowl but it is also an ingredience!! a hint of the ceader-taste gos to the rice and this is always missing. btw. i use only "gray-sea salt".
- most restaurant don't use a piece of combu for cooking the rice!
- all restaurants have a terrible soy-sauce! most use the terribly tasting kikioman, i use at home 5 years, duble brewed, ripend in original/traditional ceder-casks, "shoyu" soja-sauce from the manufacture inoue, this is worth to be added a sushi.
- most restaurants do use wasabi, what are i am saying, most use a green paste with 0% wasabi!
ingredience are comon horseraddish, mustard and color. it is hard to find a 100% wasabi, i use a powder witch i was told by a japanese sushi-fan that it is the one that has the more similar taste to a fresh real wasabi but still comes not even close (i tell you about him because i have never had a fresh wasabi in my hand an on my tonge).
- i'm still searching a better nori-leaves, when i find one i'll post. the best i have is original frm japan and has a fresher, jodine taste, most taste like wet cardbord.

my favorite sushi is toro, thuna, wild salmon, bonito (which is a thuna-family).
i have ti taste fugu once in my life .

and i like sashimi !!

the only problem at home (i meen in switzerland) is to get really, really fresh fish ,
tuna is not a problem because it has to be ripend, but salmon and other fresh sea-fish is extremly difficult.

bella,

please klick here for info

sushi, are with rice or egg-"pan-cake"
- the roll with nori (the green leaf) is maki
- a roll with the egg.. is called californiaroll
- when the fish is on top of the rice, is nigri

sashimi is only fish

both are mostly raw, some fish are cooked only at the skin (with boiling water), and some are smoked.

grunhauser,

i watched youre pics,

i like tose bats (picture "Anything for a piece of duck, Master")
but cant fint the prepared dish



all dishes looks wonderfull !

critics:
- the trout should not tuch the ice-water.

Thank you, tsunami. Very kind of you. I really admire your approach to sushi rice, as it is something I contemplated, but never moved fast enough to bring it to life. Baby steps... I'm a home cook.

quote:

Originally posted by tsunami:

- the trout should not tuch the ice-water.

I'm listening.

grunhauser,

first i had to edit somthing on my last post ,
not bad's i wanted to say bats (there are similarity)

youre home-cooking looks better than 90% dishes made from professional chefs!
wich are mostly just more decorated.

for sushi, read the link i gave for bella.

for the trout,
i saw the water from the ice is tuching the fish,
the ice should be "dry", because the fish has a salty meat (even sweet water fish has salt) and the water will entering the fish trough the skin (this is called osmose or osmotic , hope this is the corect translation).
even wore it would be with sea-water-fish!

these osmotic phenomenon that salty water attracs water to become un-salty, is the reason that a sweet-water-fish dos not have to "drink" because there is entering the skin-membrane enough water to survive,
but salt-water-fish have to "drink" because the saltiness of the water dos make it impossible to enter the skin (maybe it would dry it out if the consentation raises).

what happens to the trout is that a litle water would enter the skin and "fill" the meat.
i know youre trouts looked so fresh that they did not stay there for long time , but you still shoud try to keep the water away from the fish.
maybe with a draining distance to the floor, or with a butcher-paper between the fish and the ice.

btw,
these is also the reason why some peole say that lobster is best cooking in sea-water. because if you boil/kill it in a water that isn't as salty as the sea, the water enters the lobster and fills the shell and meat with water. to prevent that try to get a sea-water similar concentration in youre pan when you cook/kill the lobster.
same for all sea-water-crabs.

hope this was not to much theory .

tsunami,
I too had Fugu once(Do not know which species), but i did not care for it, it was a very firm consistency even though it was sliced incredibly thin and lacked any discernable flavor...
I believe that the attraction in Japan is more for the effect than anything else.

red4life

quote:

Cal Sauvignon blanc too.

Grunhauser and a California Wine !!!!!

quote:

Where do you live?

I am outside of San Diego, I looked at a few menu's after Board-O's reply and found some places worth looking into.

Thanks for clarifying the trout situation, I understand now. I have little experience with fresh water fish as all my life I’ve been cooking and eating sea species and have a good understanding of how they need to be treated. The fresh water fish is something I'm a huge fan of but the availability is close to nil here(I don't consider cloned trout a choice).
The trout that you saw there spent a total of 2 hours in that cooler, with ice being mostly hard cubes and with very little water on the bottom. It was the first time I caught a fresh water fish in my life and honestly, it was a huge deal for me( city person ). When I was preparing for the trip, I knew the lake was stocked with trout and I was going to take some sliced almonds with me to make truite aux amandes, but then I thought, there is no way I'm going to catch anything so I left almonds at home.

I have to tell you the flesh of that fish was absolutely stunning - soft and creamy almost, extremely delicate in all aspects. We absolutely loved it!! I'm glad we had the '03 Chablis with it as low acidity of the wine did not overwhelm the fish. Anything with more teeth would have required a little more work in dressing up the fish with some sauce, which is difficult considering we were an hour away from the nearest paved road.

In terms of cooking lobster in salted water... Yes, Yes, Yes!. The water must be as salty as the sea, and do not salt it with Kosher salt either. I use Portuguese salt, but any of the rough sea salts will be just as good. Funny, when I was a kid and the water in the sea was cleaner, my grandparents often used sea water for cooking. They'd just dilute it with regular water depending on what they wanted to cook or soak bread in it for panzanella type summer salads.

My friend is going on a salmon fishing trip soon and I'll ask him to bring me a gallon of fresh ocean water back. I want to try cooking lobster in it and also, poaching scallops.

Grun and Tsunami,

Is sushi really variable based on the sushi chef? Is there an art to how the fish is cut?

Just curious about your insight.

Impressive pics as always grun

quote:

Is sushi really variable based on the sushi chef? Is there an art to how the fish is cut?

the first variable is the selection of fish, ingrdience and the preparation rice and the fish,
some do marinate the fish with salt or sake or both.

cutting the fish is an art!
first the knife, the best and the sharpenest but also the most difficult to sharpen and caring knifes in the world this is one of the best!, but the knifes are only one side, the second is wich part of the fish is used and how it is cut, against the "stripes" or with, strait or with an angle, wich thikness and so on,
a sushi chef needs at least 10 years of experience and he has to want to learn, to know exactly what to do and how!

Do those come with ninja stars too Tsunami?

quote:

It just happens I had sushi last night and guess what? I have pics.

Monk fish liver.

Toro roll and unagi.


Spicy lobster hand roll.

Tuna salad.

Did someone just buy you a new camera?

I love sushi and sashimi. My favorites are uni, himachi, toro, and saba. For very inventive Japanese food, including sushi, give Nobu a try in NYC. I haven't eaten there in a few years, so things may have changed, but the last time was truly remarkable.

Maguro Tuna
Stuff of Champions. Second to only Salmon as the greatest fish there is.

What's the Japanese term for white tuna?

Shiro Maguro = albacore tuna

That's different from regular maguro?

I'm really not sure.
I always think of Maguro as the dark (red meat) tuna.
I've heard tuna called maguro, toro (bluefin), and/or ahi (yellowfin).

white tuna was insanely popular with testers in Korea, this mild, oily fish, also called Escolar, is as smooh as silk.

all I could find specific to "white" tuna
or
There are seven different kinds of tuna that are typically offered as either canned or fresh tuna:
albacore, bigeye, blackfin, bluefin, bonito, skipjack,
and yellowfin. Of these, the three found most
commonly in sushi bars are albacore, yellowfin and
bluefin. Skipjack, while occasionally found in sushi bars,
is more commonly touted by Charlie the Tuna as canned tuna.

sushi trivia

As far as I know, the darkest red tuna is tekka, followed from dark to light by maguro, toro, and white tuna.

While I love many types of sushi, there are some I don't care for: eel, California roll, octopus, giant clam, salmon roe, and mackerel.

just to add on to Board-O

"tekka" isn't really any different that "maguro" or tuna, it's refered to as "tekka" mostly in relation to "tekka maki" or tuna cut rolls... i forget what the exact translation is but roughly tekka maki = cut roll. also, every now and then you might come across "oh-toro" which is supposed to be extra fatty "toro"... my personal opinion is it's just the more visually appealing parts of "toro"... you can find a really nice chunk of regular tuna at the store that will have some fatty sections as well.

just a funny side note, my grandma (i'm Japanese) hated to eat out for Sushi - her mentality was why should i spend so much money for something i can make at home? its kind of funny but growing up, sushi, while always at the dinner table, was never the focus of the meal... kind of like having a side macaroni & cheese with the rest of dinner... easy & quick.

I've made sushi at home, but it's not nearly as good as the sushi bars. I bought everything at a Japanese grocery store and followed instructions carefully. I've given up making it at home.

too funny - i have yet to find any place that can make a yellowtail cut roll like my grandma's... she used to put chopped scallions into the roll which made it close to heavenly... i've had the roll numerous times in this style at various places and its never the same

im convinced it's (1) the rice & (2) just experience... you and i could follow the most well laid out instructions on earth but you can't replace 50+ years of making sushi as often as brushing your teeth.

Our favorite sushi place has tuna wrapped in cucumber that they call X-carb. I like my carbs just fine but this is possibly my favorite roll right now. The only other place I've seen it is on Rachel Ray's Tasty Travels.

I used the scallions for negi hamache make. I bought the Japanese rice and the rice wine vinegar and the nori. I bought the hamachi that day in the Japanese market. It just wasn't close to restaurant quality.

The reason sushi and sashimi top my list of preferred cuisine it the artistic value they bring to the table. The wonderful colors and presentation meld beautifully with the tastes, making the meal the most entertaining part of the evening. Each color brings a different flavor. Try a piece of sushi grade tuna with the rhein of a cucumber and you can create small pieces of watermelon. Take a string of kale stalk, cut it a varies intervals (not the entire way through) and place it in water for 10 minutes and watch the result. I try to eat sashimi a couple of times a week...call it an addiction. Not too big on saki, however....i prefer a crisp white wine....such as a reisling...

what i like is the delicaty of the tastes, the purness and the "quitely" aromatic, today most food is so "loud" with glutamat, and chemical-aromas.

so i like to drink plain fresh spring water with sahimi and sushi, and have a nice riesling after dinner.

quote:

Originally posted by tsunami:


so i like to drink plain fresh spring water with sahimi and sushi, and have a nice riesling after dinner.

Spring water and salt water fish?

I drink sparklers (beers, Cremants, Champs) with sushi. Fish like bubbles.