Ok, so maybe I was not a child then, but when I first met Japanese cuisine, it floored me…in a good kind of way. It was many years ago, on a trip to Denver, about the time when I was trying to tell my Soul Sis Karen that vegetables were not going to kill her, I was taken by a friend to a sort-of-Oriental restaurant for lunch. It was a mass produced affair, sort of cafeteria-style, but it was fun and introduced me to a genre of cuisine – food, presentation and eating – that I almost immediately took to with a genuine interest in, if not a complete all-out passion for. “Yuck, raw fish!” many of my friend said when I told them that sushi had met me and been approved of. It was even more funny when I had to tell one of my madder friends that sushi was not someone I had met in class or in an airport or at one of the more eccentric parties I had been to, but something I could eat fairly happily and easily at so many of the new cafes and bistros I occasionally dropped in at.
But soon I found that Karen, with her one-time aversion to anything that was not related to Wonder Bread and Big Macs completely reversed to eating anything that was as low in calorie and fat count as possible and often even just plain vegetarian (except for green peppers and any inexcusable excess of broccoli), had a true passion for sushi. On one trip, not long after I had recovered from the arduous journey that is the London-New York-Denver stretch, she dragged me off to a sushi diner in downtown Denver and presented me with a large platter of the stuff. I looked at it, then at her, then at it again. I was willing to eat almost every tiny mote of it, except for the ones so prettily covered in roe. It looked back at me when I looked at it, I explained, and somewhere in there were tiny baby fish that were being deprived of their right to a life, all because I was hungry. It did not work as far as I was concerned. I could not eat it. Apart from the ethical aspect, I also hated the idea of the small round semi-translucent orbs, so beautifully glistening and shiny-bright, popping in my mouth to release the baby fish that they should contain. Ew.
For some reason, I cannot eat fish eggs. I cannot eat baby bananas in banana flower form either. And quail, veal and the tiny, incipient fetal peppers that are often found growing within large peppers (aka capsicum) are of the same league of unwelcome entrants to my digestive system. Hence my avoidance of all that is labelled ‘caviar’, never mind that people look at me sadly and tell me that I have no idea what I am missing out on. So when they put that glorious platter of sushi in front of me, I tend to do a furtive exchange of goodies with whoever I happen to be with, Karen or anyone else. I will eat the rest with great relish and a hint of wasabi, wallop down the pickled ginger that is my serving and anyone else’s without any consideration for their preference for it and chew my way happily through the rolls containing salmon, shrimp, tuna, unagi and whatever else. But roe…oh, no!
In Mumbai these days, sushi abounds. A few years ago, when I craved the stuff, no one had it, except for one restaurant at a fancy hotel in Delhi, which served it only at certain times of year, subject to availability and the flight schedules from outside the city, usually coastal regions. Now they dish up so many variations, including ghastly vegetarian versions that are wraps of paneer and spinach and avocado (another day we shall wail about that one) and an occasional bit of chicken tikka in the bright red masala, all of which sound interesting enough (I have nothing against fusion cuisine, you know) but would probably be dreadful from the true-blue Japanese perspective. As for the other themes in cooking from Japan, teppenyaki, teriyaki and sukiyaki, along with origami (yeah, I know it is not food, but I was just checking you out!) are all about here and now – light, easy, healthy and most delicious!
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