Introduction to Japanese sushi cooking teaching
First, from fast food to high-end food.
As for the name, shape and taste of sushi, foreigners know that whether you like it or not is another matter. Anyone who has been to Japan or is interested in Japan will probably know something about sushi from books or from other people's conversations: sushi is to cut tuna or bonito into edible thin slices and hold them on rice balls with your hands. ...
In fact, sushi has unexpected historical and cultural factors, and it is difficult to make it clear in one or two sentences. In fact, our understanding of sushi has changed greatly from the past, and the Japanese have many misunderstandings about it.
Now when it comes to sushi, we will immediately think of a kind of food that is eaten with fresh fish for leisure and dipped in soy sauce and green mustard on a rice ball with vinegar. In fact, there are many kinds of sushi in various parts of Japan, most of which are completely different from the above sushi shapes. For example, in Yi Shi, Mie Prefecture, there is a hometown food called "Holding Sushi". This sushi is made by cutting tuna into pieces of a certain size and then mixing them with laver and vinegar-added rice. This kind of sushi has no specific shape, and there is no need to knead rice into rice balls by hand. And when we say sushi, we mean "catching sushi". In fact, there are many kinds of sushi besides hand-grabbed sushi. But let's start with sushi.
Tracing back to the origin of sushi, it is surprising that its historical origin is not very long. During the extended period of Edo period (1673- 1680), Matsumoto, a doctor in Kyoto, Yoshifumi, soaked all kinds of seafood in vinegar overnight and then ate it with rice. It can be said that this was a new attempt to keep food fresh at that time. After that, 150 years later, six years later in Zheng Wen (1823), a man named Yohee, who lived in Edo City, simplified the making and eating of sushi, and put rice and seafood together in vinegar, named it "Yohee Sushi" and sold it publicly. This is the embryonic form of sushi now, and this statement has long been conclusive. In many places in Tokyo and its suburbs, you can see Japanese restaurant chains printed with the font "Flower House Yohee", hence its name. In other words, sushi, the most representative food in Japanese meals, has a short history, only 150 years. (Before this, sushi didn't mean this kind of sushi, but a kind of pickled food "cooked (tamed) sushi". )
Let's talk about green mustard. Sushi used to be a dessert, so sushi rice balls have a short history of eating green mustard. The original idea was to keep sushi fresh with spicy mustard.
As for sushi ingredients, from today's common sense, there is no long-term historical origin. When the longevity appeared, only white fish was used as the material. It is said that people began to use red tuna as sushi during the Anzheng period (1854 to 1859) in the late edo shogunate period. Sushi made from the fat part of tuna began in the Taisho era. After entering the Showa era, sea urchin sauce and salmon roe have also become common materials for sushi. The word "shou" in sushi was originally "vinegar" and the Japanese pronunciation was "Su". Also, Su Shi originally wrote "sushi", which means fish soaked in vinegar. It turns out that real sushi is mainly made of "grouper" and "blue and white fish".
Nowadays, sushi has become synonymous with high-class food. However, at first, sushi was a "snack" on a street stall, which can also be said to be a Japanese "fast food". Even now, the kitchen and canteen of the sushi restaurant are still not separated, and the sushi chef stands in front of the counter with sushi in his hands. Some sushi restaurants have eaves-like decorations above the counters, which retain the legacy of sushi stalls in the Edo era.
You don't have to go to a sushi restaurant to eat sushi. You can ask the people in the store to send the sushi you ordered to your home for enjoyment. At this time, you can see green leaves in sushi utensils or sushi lunch boxes for decoration. In the past, I just used it as a decoration. However, through this information search, I know that this is a Peugeot put by the sushi restaurant to let the delivery staff know where sushi should be sent. There were not many people who could read in the Edo era, so it was difficult to write down where to send it in words. And cut the green leaves into each other's home lines, which can be seen at a glance.
In addition to holding sushi, there is also "roll sushi", which means "seaweed roll". But among them, the "dry ladle roll" that rolls up the cooked dried carrot strips has existed since the Edo era. After entering the Meiji era, there appeared an "iron fire roll" in which the red fish of tuna was involved. Why is it called "iron fire roll"? In Japan, gambling and gamblers were once called "iron fire". The origin of the name "Tiehuojuan" seems to be that people eat this sushi as a snack when gambling. This is very similar to the origin of the name "sandwich" in English legend. )
It seems that after entering the Showa era, various rules of eating sushi began. This is gradually formed among people who call themselves "gourmets". But looking back at the origin of sushi, we can see that it first appeared as a convenience food. To this end, too much and too detailed "research" may be cumbersome.
Second, from pickled food to fresh food.
Actually, there are many ways to write "sushi". Like the name of a sushi restaurant, some write Li and some write Li. The Japanese pronunciation of "Su Shi" is (Su Shi), which comes from the old Japanese adjective "Sushi" and means sour taste. Now it is uncertain whether Chinese characters were added according to this pronunciation, or whether this food was introduced to Japan from China with Chinese characters, so it was named because of its sour taste. There are two words "Tai" and "Li" in Chinese, which have the same original meaning. The word "sushi" commonly used in Japan now uses Chinese characters as onomatopoeic words and does not mean anything. The use of these two words seems to have entered the nineteenth century. In the first year of Yongjia in the Edo period (1848), 95 sushi restaurants were introduced in Edo (Tokyo) at that time. Only two of them used "sushi" as the font size, and most of them used the word "Yi".
The Chinese meaning of the word "Fu" is the same as that of Japanese, which means to marinate fish with salt and spilled grain. It can be confirmed in historical data that there is no rice in the earliest prototype of Su Shi's "Fu". Fish put salt and distiller's grains not to stir, but to keep fresh. In fact, it took many years to add rice. Moreover, rice is added to keep fresh, because rice can promote fermentation and improve anti-corrosion ability. In other words, sushi is not a "side dish rice" food, but a way to preserve fish, and rice is a "medium" added for this purpose. This kind of fish whose main purpose is preservation is called "taming sushi", which is different from "holding sushi". There is a famous product called "Fuyi" in Shiga County. In Japan, when it comes to fermented food, people will first think of "natto" and "horseshoe crab", whose pungent smell is far more than natto because of long-term fermentation. Catfish and rice were put into a wooden barrel, and the fish was naturally fermented by lactic acid bacteria of rice to achieve the purpose of preservation. Fermentation time varies from half a year to three years.
Because the main purpose is to preserve food, people have taken various measures to prevent decay. Not only waiting for natural fermentation, but also adding vinegar or pressing into various shapes, these methods have gradually become common methods. I think this is not difficult to understand. Now when we talk about sushi, we will associate it with "holding sushi" characterized by freshness. However, if we go to the local town, we seldom see rice balls held by our hands. Most sushi rice is pressed with a box-shaped or cylindrical wooden mold and then cut with a knife. This is called "molded sushi". This kind of sushi has a longer history than "holding sushi".
As can be seen from the above, Japan was extremely short of food in the past, and it was not easy to obtain fresh animal protein. It is not difficult to understand that sushi was not necessary in China in the past, but sushi has become a representative food in Japan.
Another function of vinegar is to eliminate the fishy smell of fish. In order to remove fishy smell, rice balls wrapped with magnolia leaves or persimmon leaves in Nara County are called "magnolia leaves" and "persimmon leaves". The famous "Trout Stir-fry" in Toyama County is wrapped with the leaves of Bambusa bambusa, because this kind of leaves has a strong deodorization effect.
Sushi, which can be preserved for a long time, is of course the most suitable as a lunch box. One of the pleasures of traveling by tram is to taste the "station lunches" in various places, among which there are all kinds of sushi lunches.
It is difficult to introduce all kinds of sushi in the country here. But it is possible to introduce a few representative and rare sushi.
"porridge cake" (Yamagata Prefecture): This is the hometown flavor of the winery in this county. It is fermented with Gan Qing roe and salted salmon roe as the center, mountain vegetables, and a lot of rice and wine. Finally, it becomes porridge. You can't eat it, you can only eat it with a spoon. This is a very special kind of sushi.
"Xiaxi" (Wakayama County): Blue and white fish are generally used, and sometimes river fish such as fragrant fish are also used. As far as it is concerned, this is a very special practice. Salt and rice are naturally fermented together, not vinegar. It can be said that this is the prototype of Yi. This * * * has something in common with the above-mentioned "Li" in Shiga County. Sprinkle salt on the rice, knead it into a sticky shape by hand, then put it with salted fish, wrap it with persimmon leaves, press heavy stones on it, and ferment for about half a month.
"Wine" (Kagoshima Prefecture): Add wine to the rice boiled with a little water, then put fish and shellfish, bamboo shoots, carrots, burdock and mountain vegetables on the rice to form five layers, and then press them with heavy stones.