Raw nutrition

I

love to cook! I love to eat, too. But I think I love to cook even more than I love to eat. There’s just something about putting together a bunch of different ingredients that interact in a pleasing way with each other when they hit your taste buds that drives me to explore new methods and techniques. Once I have figured out a better recipe and learned a new culinary technique, we invite some friends over and try it out on them. If it goes over well I know I have hit on something that is a keeper, and I file that away for future use.

Of course, if the people run from the house screaming or call us the next day to tell us that they have been hospitalized for food poisoning, I toss that new recipe or technique in the Do Not Use bin and never try it again unless we are being visited by folks we’d prefer not to see.

So when we were in the book store a few weeks ago and my wife saw the sushi making kit on sale at the register, she picked it up for me. To understand what a great wife I have you have to realize that my wife would not eat raw fish (or cooked fish, for that matter) if she were dying of starvation and her choices were the fish or a piece of recycled paper. So she showed great love to me and to our son when she bought me this sushi making kit—because we love eating raw fish wrapped in sticky rice and seaweed.

Hmmm—now that I just typed that in, it really doesn’t sound too appetizing.

The kit included a book on sushi preparation, a DVD containing video demonstrations of various stages of the process and quite a few different sushi/sushimi techniques, a bamboo mat for assembling and rolling the sushi, two sets of fancy chopsticks, two sushi plates, and two wasabi dipping bowls. And the whole thing was on the discount table for only $9.95. Not bad.

When we got home from the book store I set about devouring the book and the DVD lessons immediately.

One week later I tried my hand at making my very own homemade sushi. We went to the store and bought a nice tuna filet, some scallions, wasabi powder, Nori seaweed, and short-grain rice. I cooked the rice, chopped the scallions and tuna, and then set about assembling and rolling the sushi. And then cutting it, which is not as simple a matter as it might seem to be. The sticky rice sticks to the knife blade if you’re not careful and you end up ripping the seaweed wrapper rather than cutting it. But I managed to get through quite a few rolls of sushi and my son and I had quite a repast while my wife sat eating her steak and looking queasy at our food. She turned a particularly interesting shade of green when one long piece of raw tuna slipped out of our son’s chopsticks and he slurped it into his mouth like a long string of spaghetti.

She’s a great sport and was pleased that we didn’t offer her any of our delicious treats. And they really were delicious.