Fish 101

So you’ve eaten kappa maki before, right? That’s what we call the sushi rolls that have cucumber slivers in the middle; maki means roll, and for years I believed that “kappa” was Japanese for cucumber. But I never hear anybody call them that. Japanese cucumbers are called “kyurie,” and the rolls are kyurie maki.

There are gajillions of kinds of sushi, but mostly they fall into two bigger groups: makizushi and nigirizushi, or in layman’s (read: English) terms, rolls and bricks. Sometimes sushi comes rolled up inside seaweed, an sometimes it comes like a brick of rice with a piece of fish/shellfish/mollusk/veggie on the top, these ranging in bulk from slice to full out slab. In America, “sushi” means makizushi. I feel like half the time I remember seeing nigiri sushi around we called it “sashimi;” sashimi’s actually just fish. Just fish. Raw fish. We all know it academically, like trivia game-show knowledge kind of knowing—“sashimi is raw fish”—but I don’t think I ever really thought about it until I ate it here: it’s just fish. They take a piece of cold fishmeat, slice it up, arrange it delicately on a plate, and then you FEAST!

It’s surprisingly good. Not that you would expect it to be bad per se, but there’s no way you expect to love eating it like you’ve grown to do. It’s comfort food, in a weird way. Very simple, filling, basic, real food. And unbelievably delicious. I rarely order sashimi when I’m out—largely because I’m still trying to figure out which places serve what, and I don’t want to ask for sashimi at the wrong place and either, A) have everybody laugh at me, or B) have the restauranteur scramble to find fresh fish from a neighboring restaurant so he can fill my request—but I buy it precut from the supermarket a lot, or I’ll get a slab of fish and cut it up myself. This you can do. With ease. There’s only two steps, and one of them is “buy the fish.” Still, somehow at the end of the process as you sit down to eat, you think, “I just made sashimi!

“I can cook Japanese food!”