If your only experience of sushi is a supermarket selection box, your miso-ing out says Catherine, as she takes a lesson at sushi school.
But this isn’t some kind of weird dream. I’m at YO! Sushi sushi school, learning the difference between nori and nigiri, and how to master maki.
Many people think sushi means’fish’ but, our teachers for the evening tell us, it means cold rice that’s dressed with vinegar and shaped. It can be garnished with fish or vegetables.
YO! Sushi use veggie ingredients as well as fish both in the restaurant and in the sushi school. They’re keen to extol the virtues of ingredients such as avocado, cucumber, tamago (a layered Japanese omelette) and inari (a seasoned, fried tofu bean pouch), and have even introduced Green Wednesdays until September, where you can try 20 of their vegan and veggie dishes for £2.30 per plate.
But thanks to our sushi-savvy gurus dishing out morsels of information during the two-hour lesson, I’m soon up to speed.
We learned about the origins of sushi – in the 1300s fish was wrapped and salted with rice to preserve it – and about Giro, the best sushi restaurant in Japan. We discover how nori is made, and learn that salmon is only really served as sushi in the West – in Japan you’re more likely to have yellowfin tuna. We also found out that some sushi chefs spend five years just learning how to perfect the rice!
Next up, is the yasi iso roll. This time, we leave a one-inch rim of rice hanging down from the nori sheet. We layer inaro, which has the texture of fried egg but tastes sweet like treacle, with spiralised carrot, avocado, lettuce and tamago. We then roll it with the rice-side facing out.
A few extra goes within the bamboo mat helps smooth out the join. Then, after sprinkling shichimi powder, a Japanese chilli spice blend that’s so delicious I’m now addicted, it’s cut into disks.
After that, we’re on a roll (sorry!), shaping rice, adding a blob of wasabi, then topping with salmon to create a nigiri; making a California hand roll by wrapping vegetables into a neat seaweed cone and topping with spicy mayonnaise.
If you take part in the sushi masterclass, you can chomp on your creations as you go along. It’s nice to have a drinks list that bucks the norm and we washed our sushi down with potent but palate-cleansing sake, ramune soda (Japan’s oldest and most popular drink, a lemonade that tastes a bit like bubblegum) and a supersized beer.
I’d highly recommend sushi school as a fun day out for foodies. By the end of our lesson, we’d tried some new ingredients, learnt fresh skills and developed a better appreciation of how varied and delicious sushi could be.
There’ll be no more supermarket sushi for me. After my lesson at sushi school, I’ve graduated onto the good stuff!
For more information on Green Wednesdays and Sushi School visit yosushi.com