Isn’t sushi just as appealing to the eyes as it is to the taste buds?  Here’s a great picture taken by Donald Cook of Potrero, CA:

And a yummy California roll taken by Vince Chan of Canada:

Thousands of students across the country are studying for careers in many different professions, but almost all involve spending time at a PC. To quench the hunger that often develops after spending hours in front of a computer screen, many students find the library vending machines to be a convenient option. Although these high-calorie, low-nutrient foods satisfy your immediate hunger, they do little to increase energy levels and brainpower the rest of your body is craving.

To address this snacking situation, Chef-Instructors from The Art Institutes were put to the PC-friendly test and asked to develop low-mess, high-energy foods for snacking at computers. “Students of Multi-Media & Web Design, Media Arts & Animation and Graphic Design spend many long and hungry hours at the computer. We asked some of our chefs to help develop foods that would not only be easy to eat and have a low-mess factor, but also supply enough energy to avoid the sluggishness that comes from too much junk food,” says Jeffrey Durosko, spokesperson for The Art Institutes.

Chef Instructor Christine Geyer of The Art Institute of Los Angeles Culinary Arts Program offers recipes that satisfy sweet tooths, but also creations that “don’t leave residue on fingers, such as salt, seasonings on trail mixes or pretzel mixes,” says Geyer. Raspberry Cooler, Citrus Delight and Top Banana are yogurt-based snacks in a glass. Made with fresh fruit, juice and flavored yogurts, these high-energy drinks are perfect for computers “as long as you put it in a cup with a lid and use a straw,” Geyer cautions.

Chef Instructor Chris DeJohn of The Art Institute of Colorado’s Culinary Arts Program says, “Dim sum works well, as does simple cheese and fruit skewers. Just cube your favorite cheeses (hard cheeses work best) with favorite fruits that don’t drip like strawberries, grapes or pineapple,” explains DeJohn. Other PC-friendly food DeJohn likes are wrap sandwiches or spicy tuna and egg omelet sushi for those interested in a more ambitious snack for nibbling at the computer.

For Chef-Instructor Peter Babcock of The Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, the best computer snacks are the simplest. “I like fresh apples, grapes or bananas for high energy with low mess. Dried fruits like cherries, cranberries or apricots are also great because they’re tasty and leave no sticky residue on your hands,” he says. For himself, Babcock purchases specialty hard candies he keeps in his pockets, passing them around to other faculty and students. Other PC-acceptable snacks he likes are carrots and cucumber slices, even childhood favorites such as celery with peanut butter.

In addition to fruits and vegetable snacks, Chef Babcock likes to prepare a flavorful chicken broth with fresh vegetables on a Sunday, cutting up extra vegetables for snacks during the week and using the chicken for chicken salad sandwiches to eat during lunch breaks - although not at the computer. “Chicken broth from a thermos is a nutritious, low-mess snack, as well as a great comfort food,” says Chef Babcock.

High Energy Foods

Raspberry Cooler
Recipe from Chef Instructor Christine Geyer of The Art Institute of Los Angeles

• 1 cup raspberry yogurt
• ½ cup canned pineapple juice
• ¼ cup canned cream of coconut
• 3 ice cubes

In a blender, puree yogurt, juice and cream of coconut with ice cubes.

Citrus Delight
Recipe from Chef Instructor Christine Geyer of The Art Institute of Los Angeles

• 1 cup lemon yogurt
• ¼ cup frozen orange juice concentrate
• 1 fresh peach, sliced, or 1 large canned peach
• 3 ice cubes

Spicy Tuna and Egg Omelet Sushi Rolls with Tabiko
Recipe from Chef Instructor Chris DeJohn of The Art Institute of Colorado

• 6 ea. sheets of Nori seaweed
• 1 lb. Koko rose rice or other traditional sticky rice
• ½ lb. Tuna - Sushi grade albacore or yellow fin (Ask for this at the fish counter)
• 2 eggs - beaten
• 2 oz wasabi (Japanese green horseradish)
• 2 tablespoons water
• 6 oz. Tabiko caviar
• 4 oz. soy sauce
• 2 oz. hot chili sauce
• 1 ea. avocado
• 1 ea. English cucumber
• 4 oz. rice vinegar
• 2 oz. sugar
• 1 qt. and 2 cups water
• 2 oz. pickled ginger
• 1 pinch of kosher salt

Tools:

1 7-inch non-stick omelet pan

1 Sushi mat (Can be obtained from a specialty cook’s store)

1 French knife or Chinese cleaver

1 2 qt. sauce pot w/ cover or an electric rice cooker

The first step: Rinse the rice under cold, running water until the water draining becomes clear. Mix the 1 quart and 2 cups of water with the sugar and rice vinegar. Bring to a boil in the saucepot. Add the rice, stir and cover. Cook on low heat for 20-30 minutes or until water is absorbed. Cool and reserve for later.

The second step: Chop the tuna finely and add the hot chili paste and a pinch of kosher salt. Reserve until later.

The third step: Heat the omelet pan and add the beaten eggs. Cook the omelet over low heat so the egg remains yellow and does not brown. Cool and reserve for later.

The fourth step: Mix the wasabi with the 2 tablespoons of water and make a paste. Cover and reserve for later.

The fifth step: Peel and seed the cucumber and cut into long strips about 1/4″ wide and 10″ long. Cut the avocado in half and remove the seed. With a large spoon, scoop out the flesh in one piece and slice into strips. Reserve for later.

Assembling the sushi rolls: Place the seaweed square 10″ x 10″ (should come this size) on the sushi mat with the shiny side down. Mound 4 oz. of cooked rice down the center of the seaweed in a horizontal line across the entire square. Gently spread the rice forward and backward to cover the entire sheet of seaweed as evenly as possible. Place some strips of sliced cucumber on top of the rice in a horizontal line across the entire square. Place some avocado on top of the rice, next to the cucumbers in a horizontal line across the entire square. (Leave about 1/2″ of space between the cucumbers and avocado. In the space between the avocado and cucumber, spoon some of the tuna mix in a horizontal line across the entire sheet of seaweed.

Slice the omelet into strips and place next to the tuna mix in a similar fashion.

Top with a line of Tabiko caviar the same way. Take the end closest to you and fold over the center mixture. Compress down into a round cylinder. Tighten and roll, being careful not to roll the mat into the sushi! Cover and reserve in refrigerator until ready to serve.

Repeat these steps until all of your ingredients are gone. Should make about six sushi rolls.

Do not stack or wrap rolls together as they will stick to each other. To slice, trim the ends and discard. Wet the blade of the knife and cut the rolls into 1″ to 1-1/2″ pieces. Serve with wasabi mixture, pickled ginger, and soy sauce, the traditional condiments for sushi.

Courtesy of ARA Content

The Art Institutes is a system of 20 schools is located nationwide, providing an important source of design, media arts, fashion and culinary professionals. The Art Institutes family of schools has provided career-oriented education programs for over 35 years with more than 100,000 graduates. Courtesy of ARA Content, e-mail: info@aracontent.com

If you’re not making sushi at home you’re missing out on a delicious and extremely diet-friendly meal. It’s easy to make, fast, nutritious, and the raw fish you’re afraid of is completely optional.

First let’s have a brief overview of sushi for those who’ve never had it or those who have tried it but want to know more.

Sushi is the catch-all name for a wide variety of Japanese dishes. The word sushi actually refers to rice with rice vinegar added. Since this is a very basic and lightly flavored food, it is the many ingredients added to it that really define what dish you are eating. The raw fish you have heard of is sashimi — which is a crucial ingredient of many types of sushi — but you can create delicious sushi with almost any ingredient that goes with rice.

In America by far the most common type of sushi is maki-sushi, or rice wrapped in seaweed. The seaweed is called nori and forms the green skin you can see around sushi pieces. For this reason maki-sushi are also called nori rolls. Also popular are nigiri-sushi, small bars of rice topped with wasabi and sashimi.

It’s easy to include sushi in a healthy diet. Think of the ingredients: rice, vegetables, and fish. Not exactly a heart-attack in the making; just the opposite in fact. As long as you don’t go overboard on the rice it is extremely low in calories in addition to being low in fat. While we chomp pork rinds and potato chips, the Japanese have sushi. Care to guess which country has a longer average life span?

Let’s learn how to make a California roll, easily the most popular nori roll in America today. You will need the following items, all of which should be easy to find in your supermarket’s oriental foods section or at your local Asian market:

Bamboo rolling mat  Sushi rice (short or medium grain)  Nori (squares of roasted seaweed)  Salt  Sugar  Rice vinegar  Imitation crab meat  Avocado  Cucumber  Wasabi  Soy sauce

Prepare the rice according to the directions on the package. You will need about 3/4 cup cooked rice for each sushi roll, and most people will be full after eating 1 or 2 rolls.

In a small pan, place a tablespoon of vinegar and 1/3 tbsp of sugar and salt for each 3/4 cup of rice you are cooking. Heat the resulting mixture briefly and stir until the sugar dissolves. When the rice is almost done cooking, begin cutting your vegetables. Peel a cucumber and cut it into long thin strips, about a 1/4″ around. Same for the avocado. If you bought powdered wasabi prepare it also (just mix in tiny amounts of water until you get a thick paste).

Once the rice is done, remove it from heat and slowly fold in the vinegar mixture. Then lay the rice out on a sheet of waxpaper or a cutting board and allow it to cool (traditionally this is done by fanning the rice while slowly cutting and folding it with a special rice spatula). The rice should be slightly damp from the vinegar and sticky, but not wet and mushy, adjust the amount of vinegar mixture you add as needed. Getting the rice right is the most difficult part of making sushi, but a little practice will teach you what works.

Once the vinegared rice has cooled off, you are ready to put it all together. Lay your bamboo rolling mat in front of you horizontally (the bamboo sticks should run left-right). Take a sheet of nori and lay it on the rolling mat. For best luck with the rice, keep water handy to dip your fingers in. Spread a layer of rice on the nori, covering about 3/4 of it. The part of the nori not covered in rice will hold the roll closed (think of the glue strip on an envelope or the gum on a cigarette paper).

Place a strip of avocado and a strip of cucumber on the rice, and top it with crab meat. Now wet your fingers with cold water and dampen the part of the nori you left uncovered. Carefully roll the sushi using the mat. If this sounds complicated, don’t worry. It’s as simple as rolling up a sleeping bag or a beach towel, and it will be obvious to you once you actually have the ingredients in front of you.

Take the resulting roll and cut it into bite sized slices, usually 6 per roll. If you are having trouble cutting the roll without damaging it, try dipping your knife into water between each cut. Lay the pieces flat and they will look like little colorful discs. Serve with wasabi and soy sauce on the side.

If you feel brave and want to try do-it-yourself sashimi, here are a few safety tips. First of all, understand that millions of people eat raw fish every day without getting sick. However, most of them live right next to the sea where fresh fish is abundant. For many land-locked Americans this isn’t the case. Fish that is prepared for shipping to a grocery store in Boise is not handled in the same way as that bound for a San Francisco sushi bar. Look for fish that is specially labeled as sushi-grade. Avoid freshwater fish, with the notable exception of Salmon, which spends much of its life at sea. When buying whole fish, make sure the gills are bright red and not slimy, the eyes should be transparent and not cloudy, and there should be no fishy odor.

Take up a healthy and nutritious sushi addiction today. It may take you a while to get the rice and the rolling right, but once you are experienced you’ll be able to whip out several nori rolls in no time.

Alright, let’s get this out of the way up front: sushi is raw fish. Westerners are generally brought up to believe that all meat should be cooked before you eat it. Sushi is one exception; steak tartar is another, though I could never bring myself to eat raw beef. Sushi, on the other hand, is quite delicious when properly prepared.

Although the Itamae, or sushi chef, really does no cooking, making sushi is considered an art form. Traditionally, a budding sushi chef would have to train for ten or more years before being considered an Itamae, but the rise in sushi demand has outstripped the supply of sushi chefs, therefore more chefs are being hired with less than ten years experience.

Sushi comes in four main varieties:

• The first is called “Nigiri sushi”, nigiri means “grab”. For nigiri, the Itamae hand presses balls of rice topped with raw fish, and finishes with a bit of wasabi. 

   

• The second is called “Sashimi”, but it is technically not sushi because the “sushi” refers to the rice and sashimi is sliced raw fish without any rice. 

   

• The third is “Maki Sushi” which is sushi rolled with bamboo mats. They are traditionally rolled with seaweed as the outside layer, but if you order a California roll you will get it with rice on the outside layer. 

   

• The last is called “Temaki”, it is basically a hand rolled version of Maki, shaped kind of like an ice cream cone.

No matter what kind of sushi you order, they all have some variety of these common ingredients or garnishes: 

The word “sushi” doesn’t refer to the raw fish, it actually refers to the rice, called “sticky rice”. Sushi is short grained rice to which sugar and vinegar is added, giving it a distinct sweet/tart flavor.

Wasabi is a green paste made from Japanese horseradish and is very hot! Use it sparingly or you’ll be hitting the sake a bit too hard in an attempt to put out the fire.

To refresh your palette between bites, there is Gari, or thin slices of pickled ginger. This can also be used as a garnish.

The sheets of seaweed used to roll the rice are called Nori.

Soya sauce is sometimes served as a dipping sauce along with wasabi.

Sushi can be a simple as a single ingredient or as complex as the Itamae’s imagination allows. Cucumbers (Kappa) avocadoes, tuna (tekka or maguro) or salmon are all popular ingrediants. Different kinds of sushi have been developed to please the Americian palette. California rolls, which are made with avocado, crab and cucumber are popular and a good choice for the sushi newbie. Philadelphia rolls, which are made with smoked salmon, cream cheese and cucumber are a delicious choice if you are not quite ready to go raw just yet.

So be brave, give sushi a try! Start with the more Americanized California or Philadelphia rolls, or have your Itamae suggest a local favorite. Either way you can’t go wrong, sushi is a delicious and healthy alternative to traditional Western meals. Enjoy!

Unless you live in a cave somewhere in Saskatchewan, you’ve probably noticed the recent trend of sushi restaurants popping up all over the major cities of the world (no offense to anyone living in Saskatchewan, of course). The raw fish craze has become the subject of countless restaurant reviews and uber-trendy “it” spots giving the Japanese staple food quite a bit of attention. These eateries with chic décor, dim lighting and intricately designed, square-shaped plates charge a pretty penny for all things raw.

History

So what’s the big deal about sushi? If you live in the Far East, sushi is nothing special. Their cultural staples of rice and fish make sushi a very unremarkable phenomenon. In fact, the concept of sushi dates back to a very practical purpose in 7th Century China when fish needed to be preserved for long periods of time. Previously, the fish had been packed in salt, which helped ferment the fish over a few months. But who wants to wait for months just to have a piece of salty fish?

In time, it was discovered that fish could be preserved just as well by rolling the fish in rice that had been soaked in vinegar. Not only was this tastier, but it allowed the fish to ferment in a matter of days rather than months. Once the fish was ready, the rice was usually discarded, but with drought and food shortage, people began eating the rice and the fish together for the nutrients.

Chef Yohei is credited with originating the first types of sushi in the 1800s when he served fish wrapped in rice to his friends at a dinner party. He created two styles of sushi named after two cities in Japan: Edo (present day Tokyo) and Osaka. The sushi that came from Osaka is most akin to what you’d be served at a sushi restaurant today, as they were known for blending rice with many different ingredients, especially fish, to form a decorative presentation. They also took advantage of the rich variety of seafood and fish in the area by placing a small piece of fish on a pad of seasoned rice to create nigirizushi. Today’s sushi chefs have come a long way since Yohei’s time, but they still use the same techniques and principles when constructing their rolls.

Sushi Sophistication

Even if you’ve heard about sushi and you think it sounds interesting, it can be intimidating to visit a sushi restaurant without knowing how to order. Let’s start with the menu:

You have some choices as to how you’d like your sushi to look:

- Nigri – a small piece of fish placed on a mound of rice, often secured with a small band of nori or seaweed. Some restaurants place a bit of wasabi in between the rice and the fish for added flavor.

- Maki – probably the most recognizable form of sushi, the ingredients are rolled inside rice and nori and cut into bite-size pieces.

- Temaki – cone-shaped hand rolls that include a great deal of fish and other ingredients wrapped in a large piece of nori. Because they are so large, they are eaten with hands rather than chopsticks.

Once you’ve decided what form your sushi should take, it’s simply a matter of choosing ingredients. Modern sushi restaurants in the United States pride themselves on creative rolls with interesting ingredients, so it pays to be adventurous. Below are some of the most popular types of nigri that will help you translate the menu from Japanese to English:

Magura = Tuna

Tai = Red Snapper

Awabi = Abolone

Hirame = Halibut

Saba = Mackerel

Ikura = Salmon Roe

Toro = Fatty Tuna

Ika = Squid

Mirugai = Giant Clam

Hamachi = Yellow Tail

Ebi = Shrimp

Uni = Sea Urchin

Tako = Octopus

Sake = Smoked Salmon

Unagi = Eel

Anago = Sea Eel

Kani = Crab

Tomago = Egg

Not a fish fan? There are plenty of vegetarian rolls and other dishes. A very popular vegetarian dish is inari, which consists of a thin piece of fried tofu stuffed with sushi rice. It’s quite tasty and a great choice for anyone.

While waiting for the meal, you can prepare your chopsticks. Some restaurants may have reusable chopsticks, which don’t require any preparation, but most places will have wooden chopsticks that need to be broken apart. You may want to rub the sticks together after they have been broken to remove any splinters. When you are not using your chopsticks, lean them on the provided rest or on the soy sauce dish. Still asking for the kiddy chopsticks with the rubber band attaching them at the top? Check out the instructions at eHow.com and make yourself learn once and for all.

The sushi will arrive at the table on some sort of wooden plank or long dish. You may want to pour some soy sauce into your small dish (low-sodium is usually available upon request) to serve as a dipping sauce for the sushi. Accompanying the sushi will be two small mounds of Japanese condiments:

- Wasabi – known as Japanese horseradish, the green pasty lump is quite spicy and made from the root of the wasabi plant. Many people mix it in with their soy sauce to add a spicy kick to their sushi when they dip. A very small amount, usually one chopstick-full provides more than enough spice for a small dish of soy sauce.

- Ginger – this sweet, pickled condiment is used as a digestive aid or to cleanse the palate after the meal or in between rolls.

There’s no end to the types of sushi that can be created, so take your time ordering and try new things. Ask for any specials or what the sushi chef recommends and you’ll get the best of the best.

I Want to be a Sushi Chef

Sushi-making is undoubtedly an art, but crudely formed rice rolls are supposed to be relatively simple to make. Impress dinner guests with your new talent, but do a few practice rounds before you get to the real thing. It takes a while to get the knack.

The process itself is not hard, but it is difficult to explain without a visual aid. The best step-by-step instructions with pictures that I could find were at IMakeSushi.com. Their basic sushi-making directions are simple and easy to follow, which include a standard roll, inside-out roll and nigri. The site also has instructions on how to make more complicated rolls if you get really adventurous.

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