The only sushi I had tried before my afternoon with Keiko was the kind you find neatly packed into the refrigerators of Tesco. Mosaics of uniformed, colourful cubes – each injected with an ambiguous amount of sugar.
Please, don’t get me wrong, I’m an enormous fan of those boxes. They have saved my life during more work shifts and hangovers than you could even believe – but they also did spark a curiosity in me to find out what goes into the sushi we buy in the supermarkets – and how easy it can be to make at home.
I discovered online that chef and sushi expert Keiko offered sushi making classes in her own London apartment for an afternoon. Despite a lingering anxiety at the thought, due to the fact that I only cook toast and pasta and jarred tomato sauce at home, I decided to give it a go anyway.
The class takes place in Keiko’s beautiful kitchen-cross-living-space. Eclectic, lived in and with a series of line drawings gripped to the walls. Each session lasts for an hour and a half and includes a “complete Japanese experience”, which includes sushi making – most specifically how to make three different kind of rolls – and sake tasting.
I’m the first to arrive, but soon enough the stranglers trickle in and we sit, six to Keiko’s table, waiting for the lesson to begin. There’s both anticipation and a tangible excitement in the air. It feels a bit like going to meet a partner’s parents for the first time.
Keiko is engaging and charming and lets us know that of course cooks all her own sushi rice in a professional rice cooker. Keiko, by the way, is a professional sushi instructor originally from a town called Yokkaichi in Japan. After moving to and living in Sydney, she discovered a passion for cooking and trained under a number of famous chefs there. She then decided to do her own thing, and that meant sharing her love of Japanese cuisine and culture with other people.
(Right, so here come’s the technical part…)
To make sushi rice, Keiko tells us that you only need five ingredients: Short-grain white rice (300g), water (300g), rice vinegar (50ml), sugar (16g) and salt (6g). Five ingredients. You can count them on one hand! I did not know it would be that simple.
The vinegar, sugar and salt is to be mixed well in advance, she says, as into her rice cooker goes short-grain white rice and water. The rice should be rinsed and soaked for 30 minutes minimum before cooking. Once cooked, the rice should be mix with the sushi vinegar mixture and then cool down to body temperature, ready to make sushi. Keiko uses a giant, wooden bowl, known as a Hangiri Sushi Barrel, and a fan to do this – standard. Still with me?
As the rice cooked, drained and cooled, we eye up the platter of sushi fillings plated up in front of us. There was egg roll, salmon, chicken, cucumber, pepper, dried tomato and more. Dried tomato goes with sushi, apparently. Keiko says you can basically put anything into a sushi roll…I keep my Twix suggestion to myself.
The process of creating sushi rolls is very simple really, but totally fiddly – much like being back at an art class in primary school. On top of our bamboo sushi mats we lay a sheet of seaweed paper, press on our sticky rice, fill in the centre with ingredients of our choosing and roll up to produce what could sort of be classed as a sushi rolls. The trickiest part of the process is the cutting of the sushi into bite-sized pieces. The trick here, Keiko says, is to keep your knife wet. It half worked out for me.
Not only did I receive an enormous amount of tips from an authentic Japanese chef and sushi queen in her own home, but I also learnt snippets about the background of Japanese food culture, where Keiko is from. Did you know that sushi tastes differently across Japan? Did you know that it is less sweet in Tokyo because it is fresher there? Did you know that mayo goes quite well with sushi? Revelatory.
We eat our amateur offerings and learn that you aren’t supposed to drench your sushi rolls in soy sauce, but simply touch a corner. How could we have lived so incorrectly for so many years?
It’s an endlessly valuable process, for me especially, to learn more about what goes into my food as someone who doesn’t cook. I had developed an innate fear of cooking as a result of my eating disorder and I’m slowly trying to worm my way out of it. It’s a comfort to see and experience how simple creating great food can be.
What’s so scary about smushing soft, doughy rice against a shiny green slip and paper? Absolutely nothing, that’s what.
