Hi everyone, welcome to Pot Luck Food Talks. Today we're going to talk about sushi. So what's your relationship with sushi, Phil? I mean, I feel like I say this about almost everything that we talk about, but sushi is one of my favorite things to eat ever. Yeah, you're quite promiscuous, I have to say, when it comes to food. Yeah, right. I'm super flaky. It's sort of like everything that we talk about. I always jump from one thing to the other. But yeah, no, I absolutely love sushi.
I grew up, my grandparents had worked in Japan for a long time. So we grew up with a lot of sort of Japanese influence. We went to eat sushi and sukiyaki and all those sorts of things all the time. And so I grew up with it and then I also used to live in Japan, so I ate a lot of sushi there. So yeah, I love this stuff. For me, it's quite similar. Like I have a godfather that is Japanese. It's like a karate master from Okinawa. Oh, wow.
And so my father was really close to him and they also had other Japanese friends. So there was always this Japanese friends around my parents at home. And when I grew up, there was only one Japanese restaurant in Caracas. I saw the whole sushi boom which started I think in the late 90s. Before that, there was for real just one Japanese restaurant in Caracas. And I remember going there and it was really amazing because it was like going to a different world.
And there were like these aquariums with fishes and you had to sit on the ground. And there were like this super counter and twitty dishes like black bean fried ice cream. And it's like, what is this? You know, or green tea fried ice cream. Those were like the signature desserts there. And that was my first contact with sushi. It was something also like the concept of eating raw fish, which is like, you know, as a kid, you don't see that elsewhere in other dishes. It's not that common at least.
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, what do you, what would you say? Do you say you're more of a sushi purist or I think I know the answer to this question already, but. I mean, I think that there are, there is a room for creativity and also even to push boundaries, but there are also limits. I mean, there is fusion or these kinds of things and there is crap. You know, you don't want to confuse one thing with the other because I've seen like super horrible sushi for sure. Like things I couldn't eat.
It's like, what the fuck is this? You know, I could spit it out, but I've also seen like, I don't know. For instance, this guy here, Sebas, Sebastian Pinchada, who for me makes the best sushi here in San Sebastian. He makes any, he's kind of a purist actually what he does. I mean, he has done pop-ups in Japan and he's well respected there as well. But for instance, there is this traditional, he's from Chile and there is this traditional Chilean dish, which is grated scallop with Parmesan cheese.
So he kind of adopted that into a sushi roll using the asada cheese instead of Parmesan and it's fucking delicious, you know, but it's completely coherent. And there's like a whole, his personal story behind it. And I think that's perfectly valid. But on the other side, I've seen, for instance, sorry, but no, no quinoa and your rice. Sorry, no discussion about it.
I mean, maybe you could do it and if you do it well, then you're a genius, but I've seen nobody doing anything acceptable in that domain, you know? Yeah, totally. I would agree. I mean, Sebas sushi is amazing. The scallops are super tasty, you know? And yeah, like, I mean, I used to be super puristic about it, you know, kind of like, you know, when you, when you would see somebody who was not Japanese making sushi, it kind of be like, Oh, can this be good? You know?
And especially when I came back from Japan, I was really, I didn't eat sushi for, I think, two years. Ah, because everything was trash compared to it. Yeah, but, but not even that just because like, I didn't, I was like, I ate so much sushi when I was in Japan and I like, I really liked it. It's not like I had too much, but when I came back, I was like, it's not like there are no good sushi places, but I just couldn't, you know, I couldn't go anywhere. And it lasted like a really long time.
And then after that, I kind of, you know, got into the whole like Nikkei culture, you know, for people who don't know, it's like, Japanese influence that came to Peru and like its own cuisine got created by, you know, second and third generation immigrants. And it's got a lot of Latin influences. And I mean, that's great. You know, that's so nice. It's not traditional at all.
Like in the Japanese sense, it uses, you know, the use of avocado and chilies and, you know, lime juice and all that sort of stuff. Although Sudachi is a type of Japanese line that's also used in traditional sushi. But yeah, it's just really fun. I was also going to mention that, that, well, that there was, I think it was probably instrumental for the popularization of sushi in the nineties. It was the starting of chain restaurants in the States.
So they started to expand worldwide and there were some international chefs that also helped to make it popular worldwide. And one of these chefs, you can like him or not like him, what he does, but that's a fact. Like he really popularized this food culture was no Matsuisa. And he worked for a long while in Peru.
So he also popularized many of this Nikkei components, making it part of this, I would call it international sushi, which is sushi that you see in different countries, but not in Japan, you know, and something that evolved out of Japan. Yeah, yeah, totally. This whole sort of like California role. Exactly.
You know, avocado, cream cheese, all that sort of stuff that doesn't exist in Japan, you know, it's, but yeah, I think, like, I think it's totally fair to say that it's its own style, you know, and like, it's, it's two completely different things. And these things have their own place, I think, you know, they have the space and, and you can make like a really super over the top California role. Why not? You know? Yeah, totally. And sometimes like, have you made sushi?
Like, do you sometimes make it at home? Like, yeah, that's something I, my first cooking class I had in my life was a sushi course when I was like 13 years old. Oh, cool. Yeah. It was really interesting because also there was only one Japanese supermarket in Caracas and this was like such a magic place. I remember it was fucking expensive, but you would go there and find the seaweed, the wasabi, all the different ingredients to make it at home.
And yeah, I remember like making lots of like sushi dinner parties, which was also, it's also like a fun activity to do because everybody participates, you know, if you do it in that mood and way, you know, like if you want to be like the sushi master chef and cook for everyone, that's something different, of course. Yeah, for sure.
I only had to kind of like, I was, even though I was working in Japan, I was nowhere near sushi, you know, it was more like kaiseki and all the chefs there, you know, they, they often, they took like one or two years to just do sushi, you know, and then you don't do anything else. You only do sushi. And I've only once before been in a situation where I had to work in a kitchen that also does sushi, which is an in a K style restaurant. And I realized making sushi is really fucking hard.
It's really difficult. It's like, it's really simple in itself, but like making, you can make a roll of rice and seaweed and fish and make it look like sushi, but to make it so that it's really, really good is really fucking hard. No, I agree. I agree. Like all the, the fish cutting is a super sophisticated technique. Getting the rice right has so many indicators of what is right.
Like the cooking point, the flavor, like the, the, whatever, the acidity, the umami, like everything that you want to add to the rice is super, super key to get it right. And also, uh, something like my, that there were like this Japanese cookbooks at home, like this, you know, old books from my dad that were there taking Dustin and a library. And there were two, I remember one was Japanese cooking, a simple art by Shizuku Atsuji. That's a really good book.
Yeah. This had like super nice illustrations. I mean, and I think this was one of the first books for a Western audience that went deep into Japanese cooking. I heard later that the son of this guy opens like a kind of a Macasset place in New York paired with a, I don't remember the name, like a super famous New York chef. They did it together. And then I had another book, which was a sushi book. And I don't remember the name of the author, but this was like a woman, a lady sushi master.
I saw her once in the Japanese iron chefs. She was like one of the judges and I was like, ah, that's the author of the book I have at home. So I took the book more seriously after that. And I saw like that, like for the, what's the name of the, the mix, mixture of ingredients you add to the rice after you cook it. Oh, I don't, I don't know what you call it, but it's just like rice nigga and sugar and like sometimes some kombu seaweed and stuff. Yeah. Exactly. And we could call it a dressing.
Well, so I saw that you can't call it a dressing. Anyways, I was thinking that this is like a super key part. So just to break it apart, you to make sushi, you first, you cook rice and, and while it's still warm, you add this mixture to it and correct me if I'm wrong and you mix the whole thing. Usually you have like a, what do you call this? This A fan. A fan. A fan. A fan to take the steam out and then you, so you do it well while it's still warm.
So the rice soaks this whole and it's usually rice vinegar with rice wine called mirin, exactly sugar. And you mentioned kombu sometimes. Sometimes. So like this thing, this is not something like you add just a splash of this or a splash of that. You have like a very specific amounts and this amounts can vary from one type of fish to the other. Or if you're really just making like the combination of ingredients, you have to adapt it to it.
And so in this book had like, I don't know, 12 variations of this dressing, so to say, depending on the fish. And for me, this was super interesting. Oh, that's crazy. I've never heard that before. Actually. That's really cool. Yeah. Yeah. The rice is so extremely difficult. I mean, if you ever try to make it at home, you know, because it's like it's short grain rice, you know, Japanese short grain rice, which gets very mushy and very sticky.
And so if you undercook it, it's obviously undercooked. If you overcook it, it becomes like a fucking puree. And then, you know, if you, if you don't have the exact like perfect amount of water, it's like the texture is really weird. And then you add more liquid to the rice. Like you said, you know, the seasoning, the seasoning is what you call it. Seasoning. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry, Master A.G. for calling it dressing. And then you kind of mix it, but you don't want to mix it.
Like you kind of want to cut it with a spatula so that you don't squish the rice. And then you want to have the rice temperature being at sort of body temperature. It's like when you serve it, you know, it's so extremely intricate. It's really sort of like searching for perfection in a very simple thing. So if we go to the most purest basic structure of sushi, we could say it's rice and fish. Yeah. Like everything else is a variation from that, but that's like the core, right? I mean, yeah.
The original sushi, I think, is where we have to start with. Like where sushi comes from is it's a type of like preservation fish, you know, the vinegar kind of half cures the fish and makes it more, well, prolongs its shelf life. Right.
And so one of the very sort of first versions of sushi was kind of like lightly cured fish and soured, like wrapped in soured rice and then pressed in a sort of wooden press so that you'd have a block and that you could carry around with you and then eat it at a later point. And that then kind of like became, you know, like what was, you know, changed more and more and more and people started having it at little stalls and then, you know, more varieties were made and stuff.
But yeah, you can still find like in a lot of restaurants, well, not in a lot of, in a few restaurants, especially in places that specialize in these sorts of things, a type of this sort of sushi, usually with mackerel, like saba, it's called saba sushi or sometimes the saba suki sushi, you know, where yeah, do you have a piece of mackerel and then it's lightly cured in salt and vinegar and then put on rice and then pressed. So it's kind of square and then sliced.
It's usually like surface, big slice. Very delicious. Nice. So then this roll version of the sushi, having a seaweed, putting rice on top and making these rolls and slicing them into this disc shaped, these rolls we know as sushi, is this from California? The rolling or this is Japanese or, or because I'm not sure about that. I heard once that that way of rolling is something that started in California, but I might be wrong or I got wrong information. I'm not sure about that. I don't think so.
I mean, as far as I know, it's very Japanese, you know, the makis. I mean, yeah, also in a pure form, you know, the nori seaweed sheets and then the rice and the fish and you know, often wasabi. It also makes sense, you know, because like you can, it makes it kind of hold together. You can carry it, you know, it's as far as I know, that's very Japanese.
But you know, like this whole sushi culture, you know, it's just like, like we were saying, it's not from like millions of like hundreds of years ago, you know, it's like relatively recent. We think that it's sort of like, you know, super, super ancient, but, but not really, you know, it's a fairly modern thing. Yeah. Just a few, the most like 200 years, something like that. Right? Yeah. So we have seaweed, rice, the fish, which is a whole world itself. Well, we have the fish episode for that.
And then the other ingredients, like I really like adding like some kind of, ah, what's the name of this omelet? Tamago. Tamago yaki. Yeah. I really like a tamago in my sushi, like an omelet. The tamago usually has some dashi in it, right? Yeah, exactly. It's usually seasoned with dashi and... Can you explain dashi briefly? Dashi is the base stock in Japanese cooking.
And it's made from katsu-bushi, which are bonito fillets that are smoked and lightly fermented and dried until they look like a piece of wood. It's shaved into paper thin shavings. That is one ingredient. And the other is kombu seaweed. And that's basically it. Then you have, um, niboshi sometimes, which are kind of like small anchovies and you have other things that you can add, you know, but I think the base dashi is just kombu seaweed. And katsu-bushi, which is the shaved bonito.
How would you describe it flavor wise? It's like, uh, I would say that the main aroma for me is smoke. And after that, like this smoked fish, but, but it's not that fishy. It could almost be like a meat, like a strange meat, something like that. It's like a really particular aroma and flavor. It's really hard to describe. I think like, I mean, it's, it has like smoky aspects, but I think it's so subtle that like, if you wouldn't know that the thing is smoked, you would never guess it.
You know, it's very deep and very umami. It's like, it's super clear. You know, if it's well-made, it should be super, super clear and just have this really intense depth of umami. And it's pretty much its own thing. Yeah. So like, like an omelet with that stock, which is called dashi tamaggi. Yeah. Often sweetened also. Yeah. Yeah. Like I like that with my sushi or even a, like a nigiri just with that. I think that's really nice. It's amazing. It's so nice.
It's like, it's also hard to describe, you know, for us Westerners, like thinking of a sweet omelet is kind of strange, but when you try it. With smoked bonito broth. Yeah. Yeah. And it's made in a very interesting way also, where you usually have these square pans that you, you know, you, you oil them and then you pour a layer into it. You kind of scramble it a little bit and you let that cook. And then you roll it up to the front until you have a little sort of thing.
And then you pour in another layer, a thin layer of egg. You kind of let that cook again. And then you flip this little roll that you made onto the new layer. You kind of roll that up again. And then again, you grease it a little bit. You move to the bottom and you repeat. So you're adding layer over layer over layer over layer until you have this like thick roll of juicy cooked egg layers. Super nice. It's super nice. It's very difficult to make.
And it's a very interesting technique because it creates a really, really unique texture. If you make it right, the egg doesn't overcook and it's, yes, it's very Japanese. Very nice. The drunk version, you use instant hondashi as a powder on top of your omelet. And you eat that very, very drunk at 3 a.m. in a sandwich with prawns. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. Sorry. You just thought of this now. This is not something that happened to you or something, right?
Hondashi is the secret ingredient, man. You know, I went a bit experimental with hondashi and my goal as a professional chef is to be sponsored by Ajinomoto or Hondashi one day. Those guys are amazing. Like Ajinomoto, they synthesized umami basically. That's what they did. And this is actually like a key ingredient in Peruvian cuisine. You will see that in every Peruvian kitchen. Yeah. Some people are ashamed of it. Other are very proud, but you will see it in every kitchen.
I was very, I had this moment of being sort of like half ashamed, half proud when I, at my last job, I took a really nice Wagyu steak and I took some hondashi and I crushed it in the thermomix until it was a fine powder. And then I covered the steak in hondashi and grilled it. Oh, that's so nasty, man. And then sliced it and served it and everybody was like, oh my God, the steak tastes amazing. What did you do with it? Japanese stock cubes, basically. That's what it is. Yeah, exactly.
So what about fish salmon? Do you want to talk about that? Fish come? Have you tried it? Do you want to talk about that? I mean, I mean, yeah, sure. Why not? We talked to you about eggs. It's very common to eat fish raw. This is kind of like the counterpart, right? Yeah. So what's the problem? Yeah. I mean, it's again for like a Western audience, it's very weird. Shirako, it's called, it's a sperm sac of a certain type of fish.
I'm not exactly sure which fish it was that it comes from, but it's, yeah, it's the milt, you know, or the sperm sac. I think it's like cod and sometimes salmon also. They're defined like angler fish and it's, yeah, it's basically just the sac of, you know, fish sperm. And it's usually, it gets poached quickly and then sometimes also grilled. Similar as fish roe, like the similar process. Yeah, exactly. And it gets this like very, very slushy texture, you know, it's an interesting ingredient.
So can you tell us about omakase and omakase restaurants? Did you visit any, I guess you did in Japan? Yeah, of course. I mean, the whole like omakase experience, you know, is really sort of the quintessential way of eating, you know, this type of food. It's basically a sort of like experience that a chef curates for you and you just kind of abandon yourself into his hands.
You know, he chooses a kind of seasonal offering, you know, it makes total sense, especially for something like sushi, because sushi is also a very, very seasonal thing. And so omakase is basically, you know, a journey that the chef takes you through, you know, kind of like a menu, the seasonal menu. You abandon yourself into his hands and he chooses what you get to eat.
So that's important because he's got free, he or she has got free reign, choosing seasonal ingredients, you know, and they're not bound by like a written menu. They can just freely change, you know, from week or from day to day. Also, you know, what the offering is. Also important because they choose the sequence in which you eat things.
Especially important, you know, if you go to a sushi restaurant and you order ala katsu, you know, and you start with the otoro or the unagi or the anago, you know, those are all very fatty items.
If then afterwards you go to, you want to eat some, you know, sakura ebi, you know, some prawns or some Ika, you know, cattle fish, things that are a lot more subtle, then you've kind, it's kind of counterproductive, you know, because you're not going to be able to enjoy them as much as you would have, you know. So usually it's the best idea to just kind of abandon yourself into what is recommended, you know.
So omakase is basically, I would say, a restaurant that only serves sushi or is it more like a cuisine style or because if you ask me what omakase is, what I think of is only sushi and actually only bar. Is it always only, there are usually a few tables, but it's mainly like you eat at the bar in front of the sushi chef. Is it like that?
I mean, yes, but it doesn't necessarily only have to be sushi, you know, and omakase is basically just sort of like the menu, like chef's choice, you know, the menu, you know, the kind of like the offering, you know, and you take the omakase and you just like eat through this menu. Yeah. Well, my, you know, my cousin, my cousin Walter Sidoravisius, he's making an amazing omakase in Ibiza. It's called omakase by Walter.
Yeah. And, and it's a super cool business model, you know, because he found like a super small venue and, and it's only by, by pre-booking. It's like this kind of clandestine restaurants that probably works without a restaurant license but with that cooking course license or something else, because it's only with pre-sale tickets. So it's a different kind of service, I guess.
And I know also Marcos Granda, he's like, this guy has like three or four restaurants and I don't know if all of them are at least one Michelin star, have one Michelin star. And one of the, the last he opened is Pure Omakase and Pure is omakase, no Spanish, Fusion or anything. And he's doing that. And there is also this place called Kiro Sushi.
This guy is doing in Logroño also like a sushi bar, serving all this sushi in the middle of La Rioja, you know, which is, and of course this guy, Kai, the last time you came here, he was making a pop-up cooking in a small corner of a bar, but now he has his own place, Sebas. He has his own place and you can eat in front of the bar. There are like a few extra tables, but the main thing, you know, is sitting at the bar and getting the nigiri served directly by the chef, you know.
That's yeah, I mean, that's really the real experience, no? And that's also, it's, there's also a reason, you know, sushi is one of the things that it has momentum, you know, it's like, it's made by hand and as soon as it kind of like, it's put on the plate, the momentum is going down, you know, it's not getting any better sitting there. The rice kind of starts relaxing too much, you know, the temperature changes, everything is just not ideal anymore.
So it is one of those things like, you find this example a lot in Japanese cooking, in Japanese restaurants, like with Yakitori also, where you sit at a counter and somebody's grilling and as soon as the skewers perfect, it gets put in front of you and you eat it straight away. And it's the same in sushi. He makes it and puts it in front of you and you should eat it straight away and not have, you know, five, six, 10 pieces in front of you.
You have one and you eat it and you know, it has, it has a lot more depth in that way. And so that's why, you know, this is, this is also, you know, a big reason for doing this omakase thing. And also because you have to direct relation with the chef. I, for example, I had an amazing experience when I was in Tokyo and I ate at Sushi Yasuda, which is run by Naomichi Yasuda, who used to be, I think in New York, he used to be in the States.
And then at some point he moved back to Tokyo and he has got a really beautiful sushi bar that he runs with his wife. And when I went there, he kind of, he speaks really good English and he starts talking to you, he's super friendly. And he was kind of like, well, what kind of sushi like do you like the most? And I was like, well, I'm a big fan of Saba sushi, you know, the like lightly cured mackerel sushi. Oh, I love that shit. Yeah. It's super tasty.
And he was like, okay, I'm going to make some for you. He made some Saba, some Saba sushi and it was delicious. And then he made a couple of like, he made a sequence of nigiri using different type of mackerel and anchovy like fish that I had never heard before. Like you had these like sardines and stuff like that, that were all in a similar style.
And it was super interesting to me, you know, and you know, you only get that because you have this like direct connection with the guy in front of you. And that's really one of the most beautiful aspects, I think of this kind of omakaza style eating. Yeah. I mean, I've, I've hadn't had that at that level, but sometimes I've, I've eaten at the bar many times in front of Sebas and many times he cooked something special, something out of the menu.
And I guess that's kind of the, the, the same feeling. Yeah. By the way, I was thinking we need to make like a second part of this sushi episode with Walter. You met Walter, right? When you were in Japan. Yeah, absolutely. Walter came to eat when I was working at, at Ryogen. It was, it was, it was really nice having him. Nice. He came by himself and it made everybody really nervous because he was so, we had, we have the cameras in the kitchen overlooking every table in the restaurant.
And he, you could just see that he was really thinking about everything that he ate. He was really kind of taking his time bit by bit, looking at the stuff and everybody was kind of like, is he a tester? Is he a reviewer? Like what sorts of guys? Yeah. He is super methodic and perfectionist and really good.
And while you were saying this thing about the momentum of sushi, I remember him telling this stories about super, you know, like mystic sushi masters that they like the way they throw the nigiri into the board that has a name and this shakes and this kind of like super, you know, like perfectionist to detail Japanese thing that you will find in sushi. And he knows like many, many stories about that.
Yeah. There's a lot of mysticism involved with these sorts of, you know, with these sorts of styles of cooking. And I really liked that, you know, obviously like a lot of it is just kind of, you know, people being a little bit crazy and a little bit too obsessed, but it's exactly this kind of obsession, which, you know, makes it really, really special. And I mean, really the amount of attention that you can put into every single detail of what you're making is infinite, you know?
And I think that's one of the things that makes sushi and the people behind that, you know, makes it a little bit magical. Before we finish this first part, because we're going to have a second one, I would like to share like things you shouldn't do with sushi. Common things we Westerners do, like adding ketchup, no, sorry, sorry, sorry. Nobody does that. No, but I mean like mixing your wasabi with your soy sauce. Like, well, usually, usually like, you do that?
I think that's, I'm not sure that that's a no-no. I think that's kind of debatable. I have to say, I like putting the wasabi on top of the fish, but I mean, I'm okay with that. That's fine. But putting the ginger to that mixture. That is a big no-no. That is a huge no-no. I mean, what is the ginger for? You know, like the ginger is there for cleansing your palate in between pieces of sushi.
I mean, especially different types of sushi, you know, it's not for you to make a little soy wasabi ginger salad and then putting that on top of your beautifully formed maguro nigiri, you know, that's not what it's for. You ever saw this? There was a comic book by Anthony Bourdain about a sushi chef who was seeking revenge for something and somebody did this at his bar and the guy cuts his head off with his sushi knife. Yeah, I saw that. I really liked that. It's what's it called?
Gojiro or something like that. Gojiro, yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's really cool. Yeah, the guy's like, yeah, man, and like make us some California rolls and he's like, no California rolls for you. I think that's the most common. Yeah. There's a lot of like do's that you can do with sushi that I think that people don't expect like, for example, eating your sushi with your fingers. Exactly. Yeah, I always do that and that's perfectly fine. That's not frowned upon in Japan at all.
And also, if you are at the right sushi place, the nigiri should be small enough that you can put the whole thing at once in your mouth and not having like two bites or something like that. And I guess that's also relevant. Oh yeah, I think that should always be the case. I think you should always eat your nigiri and your maki unless it's like a futomaki, like a huge one. That's what I say. If you're in a decent place, because I would say 90% of the sushi places in the West are not decent.
Yeah. And you will find, you know, like hockey disc sized sushi rolls, you know? Yeah, because bigger is better, right? That's the mentality. Another thing is that, you know, there's so much attention. We always, especially as Westerners, we think that the fish is the most important thing, but we forget that actually the rice is more important than the fish. And it's actually not correct to pick up the sushi and soak the rice in with soy sauce.
What you really should be doing is flip it and put the fish side a little bit in soy sauce, a little bit, not dropping it in the dish and letting it swim there a little bit and then picking it up. Yeah, you should just like gently flip it, just dip one end in a little bit and then you can place like ideally the fish side down in your mouth. And you should close your eyes while you eat a good sushi. Well, now you don't have to, but it's a good recommendation, I guess.
Yeah. And if you find that your little soy sauce dish has, you know, like, it's like full of grains of rice that have just like broken off and fallen in there, then either the guy who's making your sushi is not really doing it right or you're just a little pig and you need to change your ways. Because that is not how you do it. That's it for this week's episode of potluck food talks. If you like what we're doing, make sure to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode.
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