Story of Sushi by Trevor Corson

Author:Trevor Corson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Science, Non-fiction, History
ISBN: 9780061962042
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2008-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

In the kitchen, Zoran set a snapper on a cutting board in the sink under cold running water. He pointed to the poisonous fins along the back.

“Don’t rub your fingers the wrong way.”

He held a knobby steel instrument in his hand—a scaler. He leaned over the sink and scraped the scaler down the fish with quick, vigorous thrusts from tail to head. Scales popped into the air and flew in all directions. The students dodged the flying disks.

“Make sure you get the scales off its ass, too!” Zoran yelled. “You think this is bad, you should see a big tai.” He paused and formed a circle with his thumb and finger, the size of a silver dollar. “The scales are this big. If one of those hits you on the head, watch out!”

Because sea bream and snapper are slow-moving fish, they don’t need tiny scales to reduce drag. They’d rather have the extra protection of bigger scales.

Now Zoran scaled the head. “If you’re preparing a whole-fish presentation, don’t forget to scrape his chinny-chin-chin, too.” He scraped the scaler under the jaw, as though giving the fish a shave. Zoran peered into the fish’s wide-open eye. “Hallo!”

Zoran set down the scaler. “Now, you want me to take the head off here?” He smirked. “There’s going to be blood and guts. Yes? Okay.”

First, he snipped off the spines with scissors. “I once knew a sushi chef who got one of these spines in his finger, and it blew up to a huge size, from the poison.”

Zoran tapped the blade of his fillet knife on the fish, just behind the front fin. “You can’t cut right here; it’s hard as a rock.” He shifted the blade a quarter-inch toward the tail. “If I was preparing a whole fish presentation, I would have cut out the gills first. We’ll do gills next week.” He paused. “You want to see it now?”

Someone said yes. Zoran jabbed his knife into the gills and cut through cartilage. There were loud snapping sounds. He pulled out the veiny, blood-red fans of tissue and held them up.

Zoran’s face suddenly brightened. “Takumi-san, do you have a good recipe for atama?”

Takumi nodded. “Ah, yes!”

“Okay,” Zoran said, “everybody has to take their gills out.”

“What?!” Kate blurted.

“Takumi is going to make us something,” Zoran said. Atama was the Japanese word for head. Normally, a chef wouldn’t have to remove the gills because they’d be thrown out with the head, but now Takumi was going to use the heads.

Zoran reset his knife behind the fish’s front fin. He raised himself over the cutting board and thrust downward with a cut that crunched through bone. He pulled off the fish’s head, smearing globs of blood across the cutting board.

“Next step,” Zoran said, “cut from the ass down the belly. Clean out the guts. And the bloodline—very important.”

Zoran inserted the point of his knife into the fish’s anus and sliced an incision forward toward the chin just as he’d done with the mackerel. He stuck his

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