http://www.mercurycenter.com/columnists/barry/
BY DAVE BARRY
TODAY'S culinary topic is: How to make sushi. I happen to be
an expert on
this topic because I recently put in a stint as a chef at an actual
sushi
restaurant. (One of the first things you learn, as a sushi chef,
is how to put in a
stint.)
Before I give you the details I should explain, for the benefit
of those of you
who live in remote wilderness regions such as Iowa, what sushi
is. Basically, it
is a type of cuisine developed by the Japanese as part of an ancient
tradition
of seeing what is the scariest thing they can get you to eat raw.
The way they do this is, they start out by serving you a nice,
non-threatening
piece of fish, from which all the identifying fish parts have
been removed. This
fish is safe to eat and tasty. But the trick is that it's served
with a green
condiment called ``wasabi,'' which is the Japanese word for ``nuclear
horseradish.'' This is an extremely spicy substance, the formula
for which must
never be allowed to fall into the hands of Saddam Hussein. If
you put more
than two wasabi molecules on your sushi and eat it, your hair
will burst into
flames.
So, after consuming some wasabi, you naturally order a cool
refreshing
Japanese beer to pour on your head and perhaps, since you have
the bottle in
your hand anyway, wet your whistle with. The result is that your
judgment
becomes impaired, which is when they start trying to get you to
eat prank
food, such as sea-urchin eggs. Sea urchins are vicious, golf-ball
shaped,
poison-spined sea creatures whose sole ecological purpose is to
ruin your
tropical vacation by deliberately not getting out of your way
when you are
wading barefoot. If you eat the eggs of this animal, and fail
to chew them
thoroughly, you could develop an alarming medical condition that
doctors call
``baby sea urchins walking around inside your body poking holes
in your
spleen.''
Other prank foods that they will try to get you to eat at sushi
bars include eels,
clam parts, jellyfish, tentacles with flagrant suckers, and shrimp
with their
eyeballs still waving around on stalks. If you eat those, the
waiter will become
brazen and start bringing out chunks of coral and live electric
eels. My point is
that, in a sushi restaurant, you must watch carefully what you
eat. (This is
exactly what ``The Star-Spangled Banner'' is referring to when
it says ``o'er the
clam parts we watched.'')
Despite this, I happen to be a big fan of non-prank sushi.
And so when Bok
An, the proprietor of Sakura, my local sushi restaurant in Coral
Gables, Fla.,
invited me to be a guest sushi chef, I enthusiastically answered:
``No!'' I was
afraid that I'd have to touch an eel. I am 51 years old, and I
did not get this far
by touching eels.
But Bok assured me that we would stick to basic fish species
such as tuna,
salmon and cucumber. And thus I found myself one Tuesday night
wearing a
samurai-style headband and standing behind the sushi bar, blending
in
perfectly with the other sushi chefs, except that my headband
was actually the
belt of my bathrobe.
B OK stood next to me and prepared various sushi items, and
I attempted to
imitate him. Here's the recipe: You start with a little rectangle
made of dried
seaweed (I asked Bok where the seaweed comes from, thinking he
would name
some ancient Japanese seaside village, and he said, ``a distributor'').
Then you
pick up a glob of special sticky rice and spread it evenly on
the seaweed. At
least Bok did. The majority of my rice remained firmly stuck to
my hands and
started migrating to other parts of my body. I may have to have
it removed
surgically.
Next, you cut up your ingredients, using a lethal-looking,
extremely sharp
sushi knife that causes professional sushi chefs to become very
nervous when
it is being wielded by a professional humor columnist. Then you
put these
ingredients on the rice and execute the secret sushi-rolling technique,
which is
difficult to describe in English words, as we can see by this
actual transcript of
Bok explaining it to me: ``OK, you go like this, Boom! Then you
go, Boom!
Boom! Boom!''
The thing was, when Bok went boom, he produced this attractive,
appetizing
cylinder of sushi. Whereas when I went boom, I produced this mutant
food
unit leaking random seafood parts. I also had a problem with my
sizing: Sushi
rolls are supposed to be small, bite-size morsels; mine were more
along the
lines of seaweed-covered hams.
But I kept trying. Remember the movie ``Karate Kid,'' where
the mean bully
beats up Ralph Macchio, but then Ralph studies karate under Mr.
Miyagi, and
then finally, in the big tournament with everybody watching, Ralph
stuns the
bully by rolling a reasonably tight cucumber roll? Well, that's
what I did. In
fact, I may have a knack for it. So if one day you walk into a
Japanese
restaurant, and you see, standing behind the sushi bar, what appears
to be a
man-size blob of rice wearing a blue bathrobe belt on its head,
feel free to say
hi. But keep your distance if I'm holding a knife.
Write to Dave Barry in care of the Mercury News, 750 Ridder
Park Drive, San
Jose, Calif. 95190.
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