In order to pursue the "extreme" freshness, a few years ago, the Japanese Food Culture Association showed a new cuisine "Bone Swimming Cuisine" in a food program.
This video caused an uproar overseas, and there was a crusade on the Internet. In the end, Japan can only delete uploaded videos.
"Bone swimming", also known as "swimming bone", refers to swimming bones, which means that fish can keep their vital signs and swim in the water with only bones left.
This sounds a bit scary and cruel in actual production technology. The chef will slice the most fish in the live fish, and let the customers put the remaining sliced fish into the fish tank after eating, so as to realize the visual and taste stimulation of "eating fish and watching fish swim".
This kind of cooking is beyond anyone's ability. It needs to thoroughly understand the distribution of blood vessels and nerves in fish and thoroughly study the most suitable knife method. Only skilled chefs can do this without destroying the life-sustaining tissues of fish, and at the same time make the ingredients symmetrical and beautiful.
In the eyes of the Japanese, this kind of behavior represents the spirit of artisans, so it is welcomed by high-end people in the upper class. These diners will watch the chef's knife work, sigh the delicious fish, and let the "live fish" with bones cut swim in the water.
This cooking method is easily associated with one of the top ten tortures in ancient China. Take raw meat from the living body to ensure that the object still has vital signs after the final cut.
I have to say that in such a seemingly "great knife worker" research and taste choice, the inner world of the Japanese is quite cruel.
As always, Japanese people are persistent in their dietary requirements, and "freshness" is the goal they will never give up pursuing, so that up to now, this pursuit has reached the point of paranoia.
For sashimi cuisine, the freshness of ingredients will have a great impact on the taste of food. Fish used for sashimi must have high water content and fine muscle fiber tissue, but such fish is easy to deteriorate and rot. Therefore, from salvage to transportation, such raw materials can not be frozen in a way that will destroy muscle fiber tissue, but can only be stored in ice cubes at low temperature to ensure fresh and tender meat and the best taste.
Take sashimi for example, there is no extra cooking method. In order to get the best eating experience, in addition to the choice of ingredients, knife work has become the most important way to present this dish. Chefs need to remove the parts with bad taste in the ingredients, and use a knife to cut the most delicious parts thin and thick, with a symmetrical size and shape.
Therefore, Japanese chefs are very demanding in the choice of knives. In addition to the most basic sharpness, they also need to subdivide the use of knives and the division of ingredients. In Japan, there are dozens of chef's knives that can compete with surgeons' scalpels, and the technology is very elegant.
With perfect knife work, the shape of ingredients makes Japanese chefs pay attention to setting dishes. No matter in which country, for high-end food, setting dishes is an important link to improve the food style, and it can even rise to art. In the pursuit of aesthetics, the Japanese have never been unwilling to lag behind and have brought their own style to the extreme.
The appearance of "bone swimming" is also the ultimate embodiment of Japan's pursuit of raw material freshness, knife work and plate setting innovation.
As we all know, Japan is a country where the culture of "raw food" runs through life. In addition to "bone swimming", there are many other dishes of the same type, which are also highly praised by the Japanese public.
Common live fish and bullfrog sashimi are similar to "bone swimming", and their meat is cut and eaten while the ingredients are still alive. Bullfrog sashimi mostly cuts off the lower body of bullfrog and keeps it fresh with ice cubes. At this time, the upper body of the bullfrog is still intact and has vital signs. Usually, the diners poke it with chopsticks, and the bullfrog will blink or struggle. The more it struggles, the more skilled the chef's knife skills become.
Like bullfrog sashimi, the chef will keep the live lobster in a low temperature environment for a period of time, then separate the lobster head from the body, cut the shrimp meat into pieces and serve it on the table with the shrimp head. If the lobster's tentacles and feet are still moving after the diners finish eating shrimp meat, it proves that this dish is perfect.
Raw squid is probably the most common and unusual dish in Japan. The characteristics of geographical location make Japan mainly focus on aquatic food. Among many seafood dishes, squid rice is very famous. The cook quickly dismembered the squid's body, leaving the head and feet on the rice and pouring the sauce. Squid will squirm wildly under the influence of salt, and then diners can eat it.
There are also some dishes that are even more incomprehensible, such as grilled octopus. This cooking method does not require any skill, just put the octopus directly on the barbecue. However, such food is not delicious at all, even because it has not been processed, and it is not easy to cook.
Some Japanese dishes are really wonderful, and some cooking methods are purely for eye-catching. Their popularity also shows the abnormal needs of some people in Japan to the fullest.
The biggest hidden danger of raw food is parasites. In Japan, the incidence of parasitic diseases is quite high, and the main reason for the prevalence of norovirus is raw food.
Perhaps because of cultural differences, I think raw food is not terrible to some extent, but the way of eating raw food like "bone swimming" always makes people afraid to think deeply.
I have heard from friends who can't cook before that it is the greatest respect to make the ingredients well.
In the era of Homo sapiens, it is also a common phenomenon for human beings to eat raw food. The appearance and use of fire made people try cooked food, which is a great progress of human civilization.
Before early China entered civilized society, "eating raw meat" was also a common way of eating. The invention of cookware triggered the second nutrition revolution. In the Western Zhou Dynasty, the popularity of Ding Tao and Taogui made food cooked in soup before eating. After the Han Dynasty, the appearance of ironware made cooking cooked food a common phenomenon.
The appearance of cooking utensils and the popularity of cooked food have gradually separated human beings from animals. In modern society, Japan's habit of eating raw food can't be completely regarded as the backwardness of civilization, but the chosen cultural inheritance and development path is different.
"Bone swimming" ends here. I wonder what readers think of similar cooking?