Sushi Recipes
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Sushi Evolution
Keys : Japanese Japan Asian Oriental
Ingredients :
Method :
* A Japanese mom-and-pop grocery in Fort Lauderdale has been turning out `trendy' raw fish for almost 20 years. LINDA BLADHOLM, ETHNIC EXPLORER When you have a yen for sushi or sashimi, head to the Japanese Fish Market and Grocery in Fort Lauderdale. There you can pick up seaweed salad, rice crackers, candied beans, sinus-clearing wasabi, devil's tongue jelly and citrus-flavored soy sauce with the take-out sushi and thinly sliced raw fish.
* It's like being in a small neighborhood shop in Tokyo where the owners know you by name and remember your favorite sushi topping. Tsuyoshi Sakata and his wife, Masako, are originally from Kobe and the Tokyo suburb of Chiba-ken, respectively.
* Tsuyoshi arrived in South Florida in 1970 to work at a Benihana restaurant and later at Nobi, one of the few Japanese restaurants in Broward back then.
* Masako soon followed, and in 1981 they opened the fish market to supply local Japanese with quality seafood. When a nearby Chinese market closed and sold them all their Japanese goods at a discount, the current business was born.
* 'We have seen a real evolution since coming here 30 years ago,' Masako says. Back then sushi was hard to find, and eating raw fish was considered a little suspect. Now, she says, 'sushi is mainstream and there are over a hundred sushi restaurants in South Florida.'
* Sushi was developed thousands of years ago to preserve fish by treating it with salt in rice. Originally, the rice was discarded; eventually it was flavored with vinegar and eaten as well. In the early 19 th Century in Edo (now Tokyo), fresh, raw fish was placed on top the vinegared rice. Such sushi was sold by vendors from mobile stalls and a special jargon developed.
* In sushi-speak, pickled ginger (shoga) switches to gari; rice, usually called gohan, becomes shari; shoyu (soy sauce) is murasaki; and ocha, the green tea sipped between sushi pieces to refresh the mouth, is agari.
* In the Japanese Fish Market you need only English to order everything from a temaki hand roll or la carte nigiri to a sushi and sashimi party platter ($27 to $70). Some customers can't wait to dig in, and grab one of the two chairs in the front of the store to eat their sushi pieces and California rolls from the box.
* Grocery items range from basics such as mochigome (glutinous rice), komezu
* (rice vinegar), umeboshi (pickled, plum-like apricots), nori (seaweed sheets and strips), kombu (kelp for delicate stocks), miso paste, pickled daikon radish and bottles of premium gingo ozeki (sake). Try the sublime daifuku (sweet rice cakes stuffed with red bean paste) and blocks of konnyaku (called devil's tongue jelly), a gelatin made from a type of taro which is boiled, sliced and served with a sweet miso paste.
* A deli case holds slabs of blood red maguro (sushi tuna); pickled baby octopus with sesame seeds; tofu; salads; and conch sunomono (in vinegar with cucumber slices). In the freezer you'll find bags of peeled sataimo, a type of taro; fish paste cakes and the infamous natto, made by fermenting soybeans in a rice-straw yeast culture. The slippery, pungent-smelling mass has a nutty flavor; it's mixed with hot mustard and chopped scallions and eaten with rice or rolled up in sushi - oishi! (delicious!).
* Finds on the shelves include ban-cha (green tea), hoji-cha (roasted ban-cha), genmai-cha (ban-cha with bits of popped brown rice), shiitake nori muruwa (jars of slightly salty black paste made from ground mushrooms, nori and seasonings, eaten for breakfast with rice and grilled fish) plus a variety of noodles and senbei (rice crackers).
* Age ichiban are large, light-textured crackers with a salty-sweet flavor, perfect for munching while your sushi is made in the back of the store. When it arrives, say 'Itadaki masu!' which shows respect to everyone from the rice farmer to the Sakatas who helped make the sushi happen. After eating it, you should say 'Gochiso sama', meaning, 'I have feasted.'
* Japanese Fish Market, 1521 E. Commercial Blvd., Fort Lauderdale;
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