= Washoku sushi, is it really supposed to be healthier? =
Washoku sushi, is it really supposed to be healthier?
- Sushi Ginza Onodera chain NY, $400 experience
Washoku boasts artistic food presented in the rawest therefore purest undiluted form harmonized from nature. Somehow this marketing of harmonizing primitiveness is supposed to be healthier, kind of paleo and keto diet trends ingrained, of course at a high premium Japanese style.
Yet at the same time, the Japanese are masters of processed foods and indisputably pioneered many industrial grade breakthroughs. So washoku needs to be the ying-yang antithesis in Japanese food culture as wholesome traditionally based home cooked meals.
- Ajinomoto, the essence of Japanese tradition and nutrition
Avocado might be a healthier addition to otherwise raw fish and starch base of traditional Japanese sushi and salty sauce in Japan.
Yet it is still not fully embraced.
The penchant for tuna supposedly inspired the use of creamy avocado to imitate the texture of the bloodiest fattiest cut of tuna, toro. Hence, the California roll was invented, according to the official Japanese account.
Yet, it seems the Japanese have forgotten their own history again, not surprising with so many fabrications piling up, they are losing track and not getting their stories straight.
It is documented with historical certainty that the Japanese and Americans saw bluefin tuna especially as bloody disgusting garbage fish back in the 1960s.
Why try to make imitation toro substitute back in the 1960s with avocado when toro was just pennies per pound, fit only for cat food or the trash dump? The avocado would have been more expensive. Why bother seeking out imitating worthless detested trash fish that no human demanded to eat at the time? It certainly was not for healthier fare which was a non-existent concept in America in the 60s.
Even the Chinese bother making counterfeits for things only in demand no matter how small or perceived.
“While accounts vary…” a Japanese man really deviating from the norm?
Embrace the avocado sushi abomination
the japan times
Jul 4, 2015
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2015/ … omination/
While accounts vary, a popular story claims that in the 1960s it was invented by a Japanese chef in California who couldn’t get hold of fatty tuna and used avocado instead for its similar texture.
This led to the birth of the “California roll” and the avocado’s subsequent popularity in sushi in the U.S.
Some might even ask, why bastardize such a highly traditional part of Japanese cuisine by replacing fish with avocado?
But avocado isn’t just appearing in Tokyo’s sushi restaurants.
Avocado is a newcomer to the sushi chef’s repertoire, but then, so were certain seafoods at one time. It’s no surprise that these chefs have no qualms about incorporating newer ingredients, and presenting them in a way that conforms to the art of sushi-making.
Having “no qualms” about the “avocado abomination” was not exactly what the 2006 sushi police affair was after.
Sushi started out during Meiji Japan as the basest, low quality quick cheap street snack food. As with any snack food, it is not nutritiously wholesome as it lacks vitality of a variety of ingredients to be a complete meal substitute.
Turning sushi from snack food into a full washoku meal has nutritional consequences.
Add to that modern restaurant practices where sneaky cost saving measures are taken on top of troublesome risky raw fish, it aggravates diverse gastronomical health problems.
Things you should never order from a sushi restaurant
Mashed
Nov 7, 2016
https://www.mashed.com/30278/things-nev … estaurant/
Bluefin tuna
- … bluefin tuna populations are depleted and still being overfished.Crab
- “There is a sickness in fresh crab that can make you very, very ill,”Salmon
- … sushi lovers should avoid salmon, a freshwater fish, because of its potential for parasites. “Freshwater fish are the most likely fish to carry parasites, which can be pretty gross…Iceberg salads
- “I’ve seen them reused from people who dined in-house and didn’t finish the salads,” he said. “No joke, some places even have large plastic buckets where they just dump unused salads and dip back into them throughout the day and night.”Snapper
- It’s probably not actually snapper that you’re eating… true snapper was served less than 6 percent of the time it was ordered at restaurants.Eel
- … rise of sushi consumption around the world, high demand coupled with loss of habitat has driven wild eel populations to endangered statuses.
White tuna
- Eating escolar can lead to serious digestive issues, including sudden and explosive diarrhea — which I think pretty much everyone would like to avoid.Anything deep-fried, like tempura
- .. deep-fried seafood and vegetables is crunchy, greasy… loaded with saturated fat and needless calories.Anything with teriyaki sauce or Japanese mayo
- Mayo, cream cheese, and sugary sauces like teriyaki are guilty! They add tons of extra calories and fat…Seaweed salad
- … artificial food coloring is also added to get yield a vibrant green color.White rice
- …your insulin and blood sugar levels, you should avoid eating large amounts of white rice.Roe and quail egg
- This dish is chock full of saturated fat and extra cholesterol, like regular chicken eggs. And since the eggs are consumed raw, there is also the added risk of salmonella.Soy sauce
- Soy sauce is loaded with sodium, which can contribute to spikes in your blood pressure. While low-sodium versions contain about 25 percent less sodium, they’re still pretty salty! Regular soy sauce contains about 900 milligrams of sodium per tablespoon serving. That’s a lot!
Oh my, so extensive, even the core signature ingredients are faulted, an anti-menu. Healthwise, the whole restaurant offering is wiped out! Then what is there left on the menu to order at a sushi restaurant that is remotely healthy or not downright sickening?
Since the global sushi police fizzled.out, can Korean-American sushi restaurants do better nowadays by going beyond Japanese-American adherence to traditional Japanese fare? Add substantial veggies, change the sauce, change the practices?
How does 회덮밥 hoedeopbap stack up?
Why Korean Sushi Is Better Than Japanese
By Javier Cabral
VICE
Aug 18, 2016
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/53qw … n-japanese
- It is only a matter of time until hwe dup bap gets discovered by young entrepreneurs and becomes the next poke.
Wasabi’s reign of terrorizing nasal cavities is over.
Gochujang, the fermented Korean red pepper paste that is a little sweet and a little dank at the same time, is what you should really be smearing all over your pristine cuts of salmon, tuna, and hamachi.
Case in point is hwe dup bap, Korea’s fierce answer to Japan’s beloved chirashi, though with many more radical flavors, textures, and aromas.
Better yet, there’s al bap, which is completely its own thing, with its crispy rice and six different kinds of fish roe adorning it. (Don’t call it a donburi but do call it a variation on bibimbap.) Then there is sea squirt sashimi, which is a bright yellow-fleshed seafood that no words in any human language can explain.
- GOCHUJANG AND RICE ON TOP OF HWAE DUP BAP
Korean sushi has existed since at least 1910, the year that Japan annexed Korea and brought its sushi along with it.
But Korea began making sushi its own after World War II with an adaptation of the sushi roll called gimbap and those aforementioned sushi-esque bowls.
Despite this, there is still no real sub-categorization of Korean sushi within sushi restaurants in the US. However, if you live in Los Angeles or are visiting, you can step up your sushi game and see exactly what I’m talking about by dining at New Shogun Sushi in Koreatown, since it is one of the pioneering Korean sushi establishments in the US.
“Typically, Korean chefs get trained by Japanese sushi chefs in South Korea and then add sauces and things that Korean people like to make it Korean,” Neil Kwon tells me as we share a Korean sushi feast at Shogun.
He is the owner of Koreatown’s Biergarten, the first craft beer Korean gastropub in LA, and also the son of one of the first Korean sushi chefs in the US, Young Mo Kwon. Young Mo trained in Korea and opened up Shogun — along with many other Korean sushi restaurants in LA — in the 90s, until he sold them all to retire a few years ago.
The standards for Korean sushi remain the same as the ones that guide Japanese sushi: really good cuts of fish, really good rice, and letting those two ingredients shine above all else.
Still, Korean sushi is much more than just eating spicy tuna rolls with mouthfuls of kimchi, pickled lotus root, and other banchan in between bites of fish and rice. It is about incorporating other types of seafood into the sushi, like slices of cured herring fish roe and sea squirt (the latter of which looks like fried dragon paws or something). Kwon tells me, “We just don’t like to throw any fishes away.”
Sung Sim is the current chef at Shogun and he has been serving Korean-style sushi in both South Korea and LA for more than 35 years. He bought the restaurant after the LA riots and has evolved it into more of a kaiseki_-style omakase spot, as opposed to somewhere you can casually order à la carte items. Inside, the restaurant might look as though it was taken out of a scene from _Seven Samurai, with its private booths filled with chabudai short-legged tables.
But as soon as you take your first bite of gochujang-and-sesame-oil-glazed fatty salmon belly, you will know that the restaurant is 100-percent Korean.
“Korean sushi isn’t reinventing the wheel. It is just about introducing Korean ingredients that you wouldn’t normally see in Japan,” Kwon tells me. This explanation couldn’t ring truer with al bap. The flavors and textures brought forth by the crunchy, colorful assorted fish eggs — flying fish roe, herring roe, smelt roe, and salmon roe being just some of them — gradually goes up in levels of intensity as the neon-colored fish eggs get toasted along with the rice in the claypot. As if this wasn’t enough, the flavors are amplified more with a few squiggles of gochujang. It comes out sizzling, like the more popular land-based bibimbap, and is unlike anything else I have ever had in the traditions of both Japanese and Korean food.
On the other hand, it is only a matter of time until hwe dup bap gets discovered by young entrepreneurs and becomes the next poke phenomenon. With its calorie-friendly mishmash of sashimi, carrot ribbons, purple and green cabbage, green leaf lettuce, nori, pear, and makeshift dressing of gochujang and roasted sesame oil, it is a dish that was practically made for California and diet-savvy Millennials.
- SOY SAUCE AND GOCHUJANG
Kwon theorizes that the reason why Korean sushi hasn’t caught on with the masses is because people generally view sushi as singularly authentic. Meaning, there is no space for any kind of bastardization with sushi, especially because by nature, sushi is a very pure food.
“People don’t look beyond Japanese sushi,” he tells me as he stuffs his face with the recipes that his father helped create. He says that Korean sushi is difficult to find outside of the Koreatowns of America, asserting that it is even tough to find in New York, where he currently resides.
Will Korean sushi ever catch on? It’s not likely for at least another five years, if you ask me. Oh, well. More amped up sushi for the rest of us.
Will washoku have to reinvent itself as “authentic” yet again?
