I love sushi, and when it comes to great food, I cannot be satisfied without attempting to master making it. The love, history, culture, art, and respect that goes into making sushi is what I feel, is the next natural step in my learning.
When it comes to Asian food, I am Asian. In fact, anything I cook will somewhere, somehow have an Asian foundation to it. My cooking education started as Asian, so in turn, that became my native language. If I make something that is not Asian I have to consciously work to make it not have the influence.
There is a cycle to cooking for me. It begins with a desire to taste a dish in my own kitchen. I sort of become secretly obsessed with the idea that if I make this dish, I will not be restrained to just small samples at expensive fine dining establishments, although the sampling is also an important and appreciated step!
I will watch 10, 20, or 30 different people making their versions on YouTube, and I will access my own cookbook library and any other recipes and restaurant websites to capture my direction. This process always acts as a motivator for the initial desire and plays out like investment dividends.
I would like to say that this stage is organized, coherent, and even sane. Yeah, I would like to, but that would not be true. It is the opposite of those. Every horizontal space in my kitchen gets used and used again. Even if I clean as I work, the work will outpace the cleaning, and the snowball of rehab that is coming grows exponentially.
24 years into my Asian cuisine experience, failure is but a fraction of what it was during the first 10 years. I not only paid my dues over and over and over again, but then I had to clean up the kitchen too. Today, the meal is so often a sweet reward for the labor. These flavors and techniques and I have clearly come to an understanding. Admittedly the microscope of understanding what the goals are in this beautiful food came from the hearts of true teachers. There is no tangible credential for these creators until that plate hits the table. When it does, everything the world has formally taught is found to be wrong.
If I find my groove in a dish that I love, this is where the organization comes through. I only get better and better at the flavor and texture the more frequently I prepare it, somehow my kitchen game improves. I transition from a post-apocalyptic kitchen all the way to the kitchen being so clean, that you almost would not know I am in the middle of making a great meal. The real effort is to take the steps to gain the experience needed to make the journey.
They are worth it. There is an adjustment needed. I have to take the practice down from mad scientist level, to casual I can take it or leave it level. Last Sunday, I used 3 cups of sushi rice, I infused too much sushi vinegar solution based on how I thought the rice may have been too sticky. I now think this was a serious error. There were so many rolls that we had leftovers for days. Don't get me wrong, this stuff was delicious! But food is not only about that, if it were, we would simply eat it from squeeze tubes.
This weekend, I am going to make one cup of sushi rice, the correct amount of vinegar will be used and there will be no second guessing. Simple rolls, with some delicious sauces, will be made. No big deal. I need the skill exercise. That other more in-depth stuff can come later. My hope is to run through this simple exercise once a week, to develop the technique I need to make beautiful sushi rolls that do not fall apart.
So here is to slowing it down and focusing on that which is granular. That exploded mechanical view of the path to reach excellence is now upon me. Stand by for Part 2.
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