The Rake Magazine

Bandwagons and gold diggers. Once something's hot and mainstream it will most likely get exploited. As we all know, sushi is hot, and now it's come to that stage.

How can we make it faster, cheaper, and offer more?! This is the general direction for most new sushi bars.

To cut costs, frozen tuna is often used, lower in quality with almost no flavor, still safe to eat, at almost half the price of good fresh tuna. The grace of a skilled sushi chef with his/her's knife is also a dying breed. Tuna, salmon, white fish, just about every fish is now available frozen, trimmed, and pre-cut. hell I've even been approached by American fish companies asking if I would be interested in buying pre-made frozen ready to eat California and spicy tuna rolls!!

Sauces, stocks, soups are also offered up in pre-made packaging. When I learned sushi, unagi (eel) sauce was one of the sauces I was taught. It is a pain in the ass to make as it has to be watched and takes up to four days to make, and with one small mistake it would burn and you would have to start over.

Simple mathematics: all you can eat sushi is not the ideal place you want to go for fresh sushi. Yes, it's cheap, but so is the quality. Good fresh tuna wholesale is around $15 a pound, plus waste from trimming. So if you go to an all you can eat place and it's $20 bucks, you are getting cheap frozen fish. Frozen tuna that is safe to eat raw can be found for about $7 to $9 a pound.

Along with the fish, so many other factors also come in play. The rice. Good sushi restaurants will use a good medium to short grain rice that's about $30 to $50 for a fifty pound bag — compared to lower end rice that is around $15 to $20 for a fifty pound bag.

Bottom line, with sushi you get what you pay for..

Common myth: Cuban food is spicy. Wrong! Savory and flavorful? Right! The Cuban culture is certainly spicy; the people, the music, the politics, you name it. But when it comes to cooking we leave the hot peppers for other cultures. We stick to the sweet peppers, fried plantains, meat dishes with salsita, and plates of rich frijoles negros con arroz (black beans and rice). Savory and flavorful, but not spicy hot. We spice it up with other flavors...

The base for almost every traditional Cuban dish is sofrito, a sauté of onions, garlic, oregano, and bay leaves. Citrus based sauces like mojo (pronounced moho, not mojo as in Austin Powers), are very prominent too. Mojo is made with olive oil, lime juice, garlic, and lightly sautéed onions. Citrus flavors like lime juice and sour orange are very heavily used too, especially in the marinades. These have so much flavor, who needs the hot peppers?

Cuban cooking, overall, is influenced by African, Arabic, Chinese, Portuguese, and Spanish cultures. Our comida criolla, Creole food, is influenced by African and Spanish cultures and this is one of the strongest influences. That's why creole sauce is used in so many of our dishes. When they hear the word "creole", many people jump to the conclusion (again) that it must be spicy. On the contrary, as I have already said, just full of flavor.

Vegetales anyone? Most vegetables used in Cuban cooking are root vegetables like yuca. In English this word is spelled "yucca" and pronounced "yuckah". That sounds "yuckie" to me - especially for such a delicious vegetable root - so I prefer to go with the Spanish pronunciation of yuca, which is "yookah". Smother yuca in some mojo and you're in heaven. Sounds much better doesn't it?

That's Cuban cooking 101 from Victor's 1959 Café. Remember, spicy culture, savory food. Gracias!

Ahi tuna: many people know tuna as ahi tuna. However, there isn't a species named ahi. Ahi means ''tuna'' in the Hawaiian language, so if you ask for Ahi tuna, all you are asking for is "tuna" tuna! Sometimes I like to just mess with people when they ask if I have ahi tuna: I ask what kind of tuna? "Ahi," they reply. "Yellow fin, big eye, or blue fin?" I ask. "No, Ahi!"

Most sushi bars carry three kinds of tuna; yellowfin, albacore, and big eye. The better sushi bars will also carry a fourth named blue fin. So next time you are dining out and you see ahi tuna on the menu, and you are feeling a little snobbish, ask what kind of ahi it is and see if they know... a good chef should know there is no such thing is Ahi tuna.

Good thing we are not in old school Japan and that most elder Japanese/Japanese-trained chefs in the U.S. have adopted our ways.

I could care less how you eat your sushi at the bar or at a table, but with some chefs it could get you kicked out!

Basic sushi bar etiquette:

Oshibori (hot towel) sushi is finger food, except sashimi; and the hot towel provided is to clean your hands before you eat. Please don't blow your nose or take a sponge bath with that nice, hot wash cloth.

Gari (pickled ginger) is provided to cleanse your palette in between different fishes, rolls, or sashimi, so the flavor does not carry over — and to cleanse your mouth when you are finished. Gari is not a salad.

Fingers: Yes you all have five, so use them. Since sushi is finger food, use your fingers to eat the nigiri or rolls. Some people complain when the rolls are not packed tight enough and the rice falls apart — same goes for nigiri. Good sushi is supposed to melt in your mouth, and a good chef will not pack the rice into a hard ball. Nothing wrong with using chop sticks, but unless you can use them proficiently, the sushi will most likely fall apart.

Soy sauce: It's not to be used like ketchup with fries! If you do need soy sauce, dip the nigiri or maki in lightly. If it's nigiri, turn it around and dip it in fish side down so that you don't soak all of the soy with the rice. Same goes for rolls: dip the corner of the roll; don't give it a bath. Light dipping will allow you to enjoy the wonderful flavors of each fish or roll, and one of the biggest reasons sushi falls apart is from the rice getting logged with soy sauce.

Do not give dirty/empty plates back to the sushi chef. They are dirty; we work with our hands. Put them to the side for your server to clear.

One bite: Sushi is meant to be eaten in one bite. Please do not cut the nigiri, sashimi, or rolls. By doing so you will lose the intended flavor combination. Yeah, go ahead and stuff your mouth. It's not rude. Just like slurping noodles, it's the Asian culture, and shows the chef you are are enjoying the food.

Watch this funny video if you have not seen it before.

Oh, and buy your chef a drink. He/she will appreciate it. And if you get them a bit drunk your slices will get bigger!! We don't want to cut off our fingers as we start to see blurrs!!

 

Come and check out some of the things we are having fun putting together with what we have that is local! We will be at the Food and Wine show with Heartland check out the Minnesota Pavillion with so many local producers, farmers and wineries!! I am looking forward to it and am going to be serving several things ala tiny buffet including; Thousand Hills 100% Grass fed Beef stew with Aji Panca,our own infused vermouth and winter vegetables, Dragsmith Greens with roasted farm beets and more. I hope the weather this year is better for all, most famers have run out of winter veg and we are just waiting for spring. I just got off the phone with Chad from Footjoy farms over in WI and look forward to what he will have this summer! I'll let you know how it all goes.