by Magda Nakassis

Kotobuki
4822 MacArthur Boulevard NW, 2nd Floor, Washington, DC 20007
(202) 625-9080

When feasting on raw fish, I don’t think rock bottom prices are necessarily a draw. Neither is being located in a barebones, shoebox of a room above another Japanese restaurant. (And the fact that this other restaurant, Makoto, is exclusive and highly regarded doesn’t help either.) And neither is playing the Beatles on a continuous loop, for that matter. And yet Kotobuki remains a destination for high-quality sushi, bringing lovers of fine fish to the Palisades. The menu is simple enough, and well suited to those on a budget. There are 14 varieties of nigiri at $1 a pop—and if you feel like going wild, you can splurge on another four types at $2 per piece. When it comes to maki rolls, you can choose from 13 different kinds at $2.80 each, or an additional six gourmet treats at a whopping $3.25 for six pieces. Add in the chef’s special handmade soy sauce, specifically designed for sushi and sashimi, and you’ve got yourself a winner. Cheapskates, take note.

by Lottie Tapaugu

TODAI
1910 Ala Moana Blvd.
Honolulu , HI 96815
Telephone: 808-947-1000

This wildly popular restaurant first appeared on the Honolulu dining scene in 2001 and word of mouth momentum has pushed this eatery to be one of the most popular sushi places on the island. Busy and lively this restaurant is large by Waikiki standards and features a wonderful variety of sushi. The selection seems endless and everything is always fresh, colorful and flavorful. Also exciting is the huge variety of buffet selections at adjacent counters that include fresh fish, tempura and a very smart dessert bar of crepes, cheesecakes and more. No reservations are accepted here so arrive early for dinner and be prepared to wait for a table especially on holidays and weekends.

By Barret Brown

LITTLE KATANA SUSHI BAR
13350 Dallas Parkway
Dallas, Texas 75240
972-991-1122

Among the many treasures to be found at the Galleria is Little Katana, where weary shoppers may refresh themselves with an orthodox array of sushi and sashimi dishes as well as a fine view of the mall’s celebrated skating rink. The menu is limited in scope and revolves around various preparations of salmon, tuna, squid, snapper and yellow tail; those new to the genre (as well as those who have trouble making up their mind) will be best-served by the sashimi sampler. Dessert offerings include such similarly light offerings as chopped strawberries served with shaved ice and flavored with condensed milk.

by Cynthia Atoji

SAKURABANA,
57 Broad St., Boston, Mass. 02109
(617) 542-4311

Busy financial district workers already know about Sakurabana, tucked into the heart of downtown Boston. Sushi-to-go is the theme here, with an online ordering service offering “fast and fresh sushi, delivered to your door.” You can also dine in the tiny restaurant, where the lunchtime crowd shows up as early as 11 a.m. For a quick and hardy meal with co-workers, start with a bowl of steaming miso soup (what else?), then dip into the sushi lunch ($11, tuna, salmon, shrimp, white fish, tekka and daily roll), or sashimi lunch ($12, tuna (salmon, mackerel, octopus, and white fish). Non-sushi eaters can choose from teriyaki and tempura box lunches and udon. For a less hectic, relaxing meal, go for a late dinner when the business suit crowd has thinned out.

by Christine Wolfe

KANEYA SUSHI EXPRESS
6334 W. Bell Rd., Glendale, 623-979-3405
If you’re in a hurry, and you want quality, fresh sushi, then Kaneya Sushi Express is the way to go. By calling ahead, 20 minutes later you can pick up delicacies such as octopus rolls, fresh water eel or orange clam, then enjoy them at home. Or stay and belly up to the sushi bar and watch the chefs prepare raw spicy salmon rolls, futomaki, a roll featuring Japanese squash, avocado, cucumber, egg, crab stix and spinach, or the soft shell crab, a bargain at only $5.95 for an eight-piece roll. Noodle and rice bowls (including a vegetarian selection with sweet potato noodles, vegetables and black mushrooms), tempura and soups/salads round out the experience, where you and your non-sushi eating friend can eat like kings for under 20 bucks.

By Christine Wolfe

ICHIBAN RESTAURANT
3333 S. Rural Rd., Tempe, 480-345-9848
This Tempe mainstay, located away from the hubbub, commercialism and college hangouts of Mill Avenue, is an intimate, friendly place to order your favorite Japanese dish. From tuna rolls with their red flesh stark against the white rice to lobster rolls to the always-popular Ichiban spicy roll, a white-fish creation drizzled with spicy soy sauce and broiled, the sushi lover won’t go hungry here. Some specialties change daily; ask for the chef’s special and you’ll be pleasantly surprised with the freshest fish available.

by Christine Wolfe

HIRO SUSHI 9393 N. 90th St
Scottsdale AZ
480-314-4215

Specializing in ingredients straight from Japan, Hiro Sushi offers diners delicacies such as Stripped Jack, an expensive whitefish, snapper and Bluefin tuna. The Crazy roll, featuring spicy tuna, avocado, cucumber and rice wrapped around a deep-fried shrimp, is a pairing featuring the creamy texture of the raw tuna paired with the crunchy-sweet of the shrimp. Prices are moderate and the atmosphere relaxed at Hiro, so grab a saki and a seat at the sushi bar and dig into some of the best specialties of Japan.

Making Sushi at Home - Part 3
By Ross A. Christensen
 

Putting it all together
 

There are several different ways to present sushi.  There is the minimalistic sashimi style, which is simply laying out a couple of pieces of a few different types of raw fish.  This is the purest form of eating raw fish, with nothing getting in between you and the flavor of the seafood.  Since that’s really all there is to it, I will trust you to figure out how to present this best in your home.  Then there is Nigiri sushi, in which the pieces of fish are placed on top of a specially prepared ball of rice.  We’ll take our time here, as the rice is an important pedestal for the seafood.  Then there is the category of rolls, in which there are several styles.  There is maki (roll), uramaki (inside-out roll), and temaki (hand roll).  Finally, we’ll talk about the Gunkan, or Battleship roll.  Generally speaking when presenting any of these styles of sushi, two pieces of any variety are placed side by side on the plate.  Japanese custom states that the numbers one and three are associated with death, and so sushi always comes in twos.

Slicing the fish for sushi is a skill that can take years to learn.  There are even several schools of belief on the issue.  Some people believe that some fish should be cut with a pulling motion while others should be cut with a pushing motion.  We are not interested in these training methods for making sushi at home, so we won’t go into depth about them.  I do recommend using a sharp knife and make as few movements while slicing as possible.  Make every attempt to slice your fish smoothly so as to make an attractive presentation.  When making the rolls it’s best to slice the fish, and any other ingredients like cucumber, carrots, etc., into long thin strips.   

Nigiri.  Nigiri means “grasp” or “hold” because of the way that you make the rice ball.  To make a “shari”, or rice ball, for sushi you should start by moistening your hands with water spiked with a little bit of vinegar.  Take a small amount of rice in your hand, about a quarter of a cup.  Curling the fingers of your left hand up, place the rice into those fingers to begin to form the ball gently into a cylinder.  With your right hand, make a “claw” out of your index & middle finger and thumb, and as your left hand is gently squeezing the rice pinch the ends of the rice ball with your “claw” to keep it from squeezing out of your hand.  This will work adequately but you can form a better rice ball if, when you form the “claw” with your right hand you tuck your thumb all the way under, so that when you are pinching the rice ball, you’re squeezing it against the nail side of your thumb.  Rotate the rice ball in your left hand and gently squeeze again.  Repeat a time or two, until you have a nice oblong ball of rice that holds together well.  Don’t overdo this step; you don’t want your rice ball too firm.  If you go too far you’ll wind up with a rice hockey puck which will detract from the lightness and subtlety of the sushi.  Once you have the shari just how you want it, select a piece of fish.  Take a small dab of wasabi paste (how much depends on personal taste, but if you’re cooking for others stick to the “less is more” philosophy) and wipe it directly down the center of the fish.  Place the fish wasabi side down onto the shari.  Repeat with the same type of fish, and place both pieces on a plate, side by side. 

Maki.  Start with a whole sheet of nori and begin by waving it above an open flame, like a burner on your stovetop, allowing the nori to toast but not curl or burn.  It will become crisp and give off a fragrant aroma.  If you have a maki su (bamboo rolling mat), insert it into a one-gallon size ziptop bag to protect it and keep it clean.  There are also many flexible cutting boards on the market today that will work well for this purpose.  In a pinch, even a magazine wrapped in plastic wrap will work out.  Lay the toasted nori sheet on your rolling mat with the rough side up and shiny side down.  Moisten your hands with water spiked with a little bit of vinegar and grab a handful of rice, about the size of a baseball.  Starting at the edge closest to you, place the rice on the nori and spread rice out to the edges evenly away from you, covering three-quarters of the nori sheet, leaving the far edge clear.  Now place the filling for the maki in a horizontal strip, about a half-inch up from the edge closest to you, evenly spreading it all the way out to either side.  The filling should take up, at most, about one quarter of the area of the rice.  Try starting with a small amount of filling at first until you get better at making the rolls.

Now here’s the part that’s going to take a little practice, the rolling.  Make sure the edge of the nori closest to you is lined up with the edge of the rolling mat closest to you (we’ll call this the leading edge), with no overlapping.  Start to roll the mat away from you, keeping everything stable and tight together.  As the mat rolls one complete revolution, turn the leading edge up just a bit so that it doesn’t go under the nori roll.  Continue rolling the nori away from you.  The leading edge of the nori should meet right about where the rice ends - if it goes beyond it won’t form a tight roll, so back up the roll just a little bit and try to tighten it down a little more as you re-roll it.  Now as you approach the far edge of the nori, moisten the edge with a little bit of water to seal the roll, and finish rolling.  Some sushi chefs like to seal the roll with individual grains of rice, but do we want to get that fussy?  Now before you unroll the mat take a few seconds to just lightly squeeze the roll all along the length to compress everything together prior to slicing.

Here’s a tip for the slicing: dip your knife blade in a bowl of water, then point the tip straight up and let a bead of water travel down the length of the blade.  This sounds like a superstitious ritual sushi chefs have indulged in, but I was astonished at how much easier it made this task.  Also, make your slices fast at the top of the roll, then gentle and steady through the main body of the roll.

Slice your roll in half, then place the two pieces side by side and slice the two pieces in half.  Repeat the process again, slicing the four pieces in half to produce eight equal pieces from one roll.  Now if you’ve followed these instructions word for word, you’re going to have a really lousy looking maki roll.  But don’t worry, it only gets better from here.  Like I said before, this takes practice, even I still make some ugly looking maki on a regular basis.

Uramaki.  Okay, now that you’ve had a little practice rolling with the bamboo mat, let’s try the “inside out” roll.  Toast your nori over an open flame as you did for the maki and place on the plastic wrapped rolling mat.  This time cover the entire piece of nori with the layer of rice, and sprinkle all over with toasted sesame seeds.  Carefully lift the entire piece of nori and turn it over with the rice now facing down.  Spread your fillings for the roll like you did for the maki, in a horizontal strip about a half-inch up from the edge closest to you, evenly spreading it all the way out to either side.  A popular roll made in this style is the California Roll, and for that you would place avocado and crab on the nori.  Once your fillings are properly placed, roll the bamboo mat forward, pressing firmly as you roll to compress the ingredients and form a cylinder.  When the rolled nori meets the rice on the other side, the rice will be sticky enough to seal the edge. Remove from the rolling mat, and slice just as you did for maki.  Don’t worry if a few grains of rice or sesame seeds fall off, and once again, practice makes perfect.

Temaki.  Temaki is so easy to make that even a drunk trout could make it.  This is Japanese finger food and is the least complicated. You may read instructions for temaki that describe precise placement for the rice and fillings on the nori, going diagonally from the center to one of the corners, at a forty-five degree angle, rolling the opposite corners together to form a cone,… but the reality of the temaki is that it just doesn’t have to be that difficult.  No mater where you place your rice and fillings on the nori, just roll it up and eat it.  This makes temaki the perfect party food because not only do you not have to spend so much time preparing sushi in advance, it also makes for an interactive experience for your guests, despite their varying levels of inebriation.  Simply lay out some toasted sheets of nori, put some sushi rice in a decorative serving bowl, and place an assortment of seafood and other sushi fillings on a platter, and let your guests make their own.  Even the drunk trout can grab a piece of nori, spoon rice from the top to the bottom down the center of the nori, lay on some tuna and cucumber strips and roll it into a cone.  Easy, right?    
 

Gunkan.  To make a Gunkan, or “Battleship” sushi, to start out with a well formed nigiri rice ball, or shari, as described above.  Place the shari on your work surface and wrap around the sides of it with a strip of nori.  Lightly tamp down the shari with your fingertip to make the bottom firm, but again, don’t overdo this step. There should now be a pocket formed by the nori with the rice on the bottom.  Fill it with your choice of loose types of sushi ingredients, like tobiko (flying fish eggs), ikura (salmon eggs), spicy tuna salad, scallop salad, even western favorites like chicken teriyaki, or tuna and mayonnaise… anything that can’t be placed on a shari on its own.

Be patient with yourself as you practice.  If you present all these varieties to your guests in your home, I guarantee they will be duly impressed with your talents.  I hope you’ve enjoyed this series and that it has inspired you to try your hand at making your own sushi.

© Ross A. Christensen 2008