The Story of Sushi (22 page)

“Look at all the meat you’re throwing away,” he said. If the students had been working for a restaurant, these fillet cuts would probably have gotten them fired. Zoran released his grip, and the carcass dropped into the garbage.

Everything the students had just been through happens every few days in any sushi restaurant that cuts its own fish—except at about quadruple the speed and with a lot more fish. In the kitchen behind any sushi bar, the carnage is fast and furious.

In the old days, sushi chefs wrapped their fillets of fish in kelp. Now sushi chefs enclose blocks of
neta
tightly in plastic wrap so they don’t dry out in the refrigerator. At Hama Hermosa, the chefs went through a mile and a half of plastic wrap every month.

Kate laid paper towels in a
neta
tray. Zoran loaded the tray with the slabs of meat. He pointed to different shadings of flesh in each piece. Most of the meat was pale, fast-twitch muscle. But the edges of some pieces were dark purple—a sure sign of the presence of iron, and the machinery for employing oxygen for endurance swimming. Together, these sections of dark flesh had composed the narrow strip of slow-twitch muscle that had stretched down each side of the fish, under the skin.

“Americans don’t like this meat,” Zoran said. “If it’s fresh, Japanese customers will eat it, no problem.”

The paler, fast-twitch flesh, meanwhile, contained curving, slanted sections of muscle.

While slow-twitch fibers run parallel to the fish’s body, fast-twitch fibers of fish nest against each other in geometrically complex sheets that angle off the fish’s midline by as much as 45 degrees, forming a series of spiral tracks down the body. The geometry is perfectly calibrated so that all the fibers at a particular point along the length of the fish contract together, regardless of their distance from the backbone. This allows for the maximum exertion of force.

Zoran straightened up. “Isn’t this fun?” he asked, smiling.

After a morning of bloody violence, the students descended into meditative silence and practiced sashimi with the butchered yellow
tail. They remembered not to eat it because it wasn’t fresh. One customer had no such compunction. A housefly buzzed around the table and landed on the sashimi, sampling it with apparent relish.

Kate was trying without success to slice a piece of fiber from her yellowtail using her willow-leaf blade. Zoran materialized next to her. He held out a cheap, mass-produced knife.

“Try this,” Zoran said.

Zoran leaned on the table and glared while Kate tried the cheap knife. It cut right through the fiber.

“Your knife isn’t sharp,” Zoran said. After three days of heavy use, Kate’s high-carbon blade had lost its edge.

“Today, I want you to stay after class,” Zoran said. “Don’t go home. I want to see how you’re sharpening your knife.”

“You saw it before,” Kate said.

“Well,” Zoran said, “you’re obviously not doing something right.”

Suddenly Kate winced and dropped the knife. She squeezed her left hand into a fist, pressing her thumb against her index finger. She’d finally cut her finger. Bright red blood oozed out. She rushed to fetch a Band-Aid. Zoran stopped her.

“Don’t leave your fish lying out, Katie.”

She hesitated.

“You’re not dying,” Zoran said. “I can see that. You haven’t cut a major artery, have you?”

She shook her head.

“Okay, so put your fish away first. Never leave fish lying out.”

When Kate returned, nursing her cut finger, Zoran addressed the class.

“Honestly, you guys, today your knives are the sharpest I’ve ever seen in any class, ever. Very good job.”

He paused.

“Except Katie. Everybody has to help Katie sharpen her knives today. Don’t let her go home until she’s sharpened her knives. We have to help her along.”

And with that, Kate was no longer one of the guys. Once more, she’d become the flaky girl who couldn’t do anything right. Moments later, when no one was paying attention, she shut her knife case and slipped out of the building.

W
ith a few simple words, Zoran had dragged Kate all the way back to the first week of school. It was as if she had not gotten past day two, when Zoran yelled in front of the whole class, ‘Kate, your knives are
terrible!
’ The worst part of it was, it was her own fault.

She arrived at school early the next morning and helped wash and cook rice. She moved briskly around the cypress tub, mixing vinegar into the rice, while Zoran introduced the day’s lesson.

“Today we’re doing
hirame
and
karei,
” Zoran said. “What’s the difference?”

One of the students hazarded a guess. “Ugliness?”

“Well, maybe!” Zoran unwrapped two fish. They looked as if they’d been run over by steamrollers.

Hirame
and
karei
are Japanese names for the fish that Americans call flounder, halibut, turbot, sole, or plaice, depending on the region and species. Regardless of the names, the main thing about them is that they are all
flat
—flat as pancakes. And really weird-looking. Both of their eyes are on the same side of their head, and their mouths open sideways, like in a Picasso painting.

Zoran pointed at the two fish. One was large and one was small.

“You might say size. But there’s another difference.”

The students were stumped.

“See this?” he said. “The small one faces right. The big one faces left.”

Because flatfish are so flat and strange, most people don’t notice the obvious characteristic that separates the 550 or so species of flatfish into two distinct camps. They point in opposite directions. And just to confuse things, there is at least one species of flatfish, called the starry flounder, that goes both ways. Off the coast of California, half of all starry flounders face right. Off the coast of Japan, all starry flounders face left.

The Japanese refer to most left-sided flatfish as
hirame
and most right-sided ones as
karei.
The best way to tell them apart is by the price tag. At sushi bars in Japan,
hirame
have a reputation for being more delicious. Most
karei
are cheaper, and the Japanese eat them cooked more often than raw.

Flatfish as a group haven’t left behind much of a fossil record. But in a sense, they didn’t need to. Flatfish are themselves striking evidence of the process of evolution. They reveal evolution at its best—and at its worst.

For fish that want to eat an unsuspecting sea bug or worm for lunch, lying sideways on the sand makes sense. That way, the fish look less like predators and more like rocks. Over time, as the fish lay on their sides imitating rocks, the flatter fish were more successful. Soon they became so flat they simply disappeared into the sand.

Flatfish also evolved in such a way that both eyes ended up on one side of the fish’s body. Picasso may have considered this beautiful, but generally it’s not the sort of development that counts as an improvement. Imagine a child trying to get through grade school with both eyes on the same side of his nose.

Yet without such seemingly bizarre mutations, the myriad creatures of the planet—including us—would never have evolved at all. While mutations often cause problems, some are fortuitous, and over time the useful ones add up. Having both eyes on one side of the head could be considered an aesthetic disaster for some, but for a fish that hunts by lying on its side and ambushing passing prey, it’s a vast improvement. It’s much easier to catch things when you have depth perception.

In a sense, every flatfish today still passes through the entire
multi-million-year process of evolution, but compressed into about a week. Flatfish are born perfectly normal. For their first month, a baby flatfish swims around looking like a regular fish. It must come as a rude shock when, over the course of just a few days, its cranium, brain, jaw, nose, and eye sockets all suddenly rotate over to one side.

Scientists aren’t certain what genes cause the change, but they do know what triggers it. The young fish’s thyroid gland releases a sudden surge of hormones. One side of the fish seems to respond more slowly to the hormones than the other. When researchers suppressed the hormones, the fish never went flat. It remained upright and grew into a more or less regular fish.

In the case of the starry flounder, where some individuals lean left and some right, the left-sided ones are the oddballs. In all vertebrates, optic nerves carry information from the right eye to the left side of the brain, and from the left eye to the right side of the brain. In left-sided starry flounders, these optic nerves wrap around each other twice.

While the starry flounder may lean left or right, a species of southern flounder can lean male or female. Which way they swing depends partly on the temperature of the water. Heat generates males. Where cooler waters prevail, the embryos tend to swing female.

For the Japanese,
hirame
are such high-class fish that sushi vendors on the streets of old Tokyo rarely sold them. Throughout much of the twentieth century,
hirame
have, like
tai,
enjoyed pride of place at fine sushi bars in Japan.

This may seem surprising because flatfish have less flavor than most other fish. They don’t get much exercise. They spend most of their time lying around impersonating sand. But sushi connoisseurs appreciate flatfish for several reasons. One is the subtlety of their taste. While most flatfish muscle lacks a high concentration of flavor elements, it does contain a variety of interesting amino acids.

Another attraction is texture. Flatfish muscle contains a high proportion of a connective protein called elastin. The result is what Japanese diners call
kori-kori.
The term suggests a combination of crunchiness, elasticity, and firmness. Another example of food that is
kori-kori
is lightly cooked broccoli or asparagus.

Many Japanese enjoy the sensation of
kori-kori
and the gradual release of delicate tastes that come from raw flatfish. Flatfish sushi or sashimi rewards slow, thorough chewing. Some experts recommend that people eat flatfish sushi with their eyes closed, in order to fully appreciate the texture and the subtle interplay of flavors.

Flatfish have an additional attraction, and the Japanese consider it one of the best features in all of sushi.

Americans who think fatty tuna belly is the pinnacle of Japanese sushi are mistaken. Zoran pointed to the outermost edge of the larger flatfish’s body.

“
Engawa,
” he said. “The adductor muscle is a delicacy. Japanese customers will eat this before they eat
toro.
”

Many kinds of flatfish swim without using their main body muscles. In fact, they hardly bend their spines at all. Instead, they have evolved continuous fins running down each edge of their flattened bodies, plus a row of special muscles along the base of each fin. These fin adductor muscles undulate, propelling the fish forward. The fish floats across the sand like a hovercraft.

The word
engawa
is an architectural term. It refers to the veranda-like walkways that run around the outside of a traditional Japanese home. Early Japanese fishermen apparently saw a resemblance in the edge fins that run around the outside of flatfish. The
engawa
muscles contain more elastin, so they’re even chewier, but they also have more flavor, since they get more exercise. In addition, they’re rich with fat. The main body of a flatfish is 1 to 2 percent fat. The
engawa
is 15 to 20 percent fat.

In the United States, most people have never heard of
engawa.
Some fish purveyors know enough to set it aside. It’s sometimes referred to in English as “dorsal fin muscle.” Actually, since a flatfish is a regular fish lying on its side, half of all
engawa
is technically “anal fin muscle.” But that’s not something sushi chefs emphasize.

“The
karei
is local,” Zoran said, “so we’re not going to eat it. We’ll eat the
hirame
raw.” Again, the local fish wasn’t as fresh as the one that had ridden several thousand miles in a jet.

Zoran produced eight more right-eyed flatfish, each about 10 inches long. He produced three
hirame
as well—left-eyed flatfish, nearly twice as big. The students each took a small fish.

Like yellowtail, flatfish have small scales. Once more, the students had to slice the scales off before filleting the fish. Their knives kept slipping and cutting into the flesh. One of the students quit and rubbed his knife on a whetstone.

Marcos stopped, stood up straight, and let his arms flop down to his sides. He sighed. “This is so hard!”

“Anybody getting super-frustrated?” Zoran asked.

Marcos raised his hand. Kate looked up glumly. She raised hers, too. Zoran brought over the steel scouring pad he’d shown them the day before. He smiled sweetly at Kate and whispered, “Don’t tell.” She took a turn with the scouring pad first, and scrubbed her fish in the sink.

Next Zoran showed them how to clean a flatfish.

“Lots of guts and blood in this fish,” Zoran said as he cut open the belly. Blood and organs gushed into Zoran’s metal tray. Kate glanced away, but then she turned back and watched. Zoran explained how to fillet a flatfish while preserving the precious
engawa
—the adductor muscle along the fins.

“See this line? That’s its spine. Cut a line along the spine.” He made an incision down the midline, deepened the cut, then brought the knife around to the edge of the fish and cut repeatedly in the direction of the ribs. He pulled the flesh away from the bone a little farther with each cut. Working carefully so as not to damage the
engawa,
he produced four fillets—one on each side of the top, one on each side of the bottom. Flatfish, like big tubular fish, qualified for the “five-piece breakdown.”

Zoran peeled away the skin along the edge and exposed the
engawa.
The adductor muscle was composed of a glistening string of pale pointy capsules of transparent flesh.

The students went to work. Kate had trouble making her first incisions. She looked around. She cleared her throat.

“Zoran, could you help me?”

He strode over and picked up her triangular fillet knife. He cut one fillet for her, partway through, and handed her the knife. He smiled. “Easy, see!”

Zoran circled the room. “What do you enjoy better,” he asked, sounding cheerful, “cutting fish, making sushi, or cooking?”

“Cutting fish,” Kate said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

Zoran chuckled. He took a few more turns around the room, examining the students’ work. He returned to Kate’s station.

“Takumi’s and Kate’s fillets are the best,” Zoran said, examining Kate’s fillets over her shoulder. “Very good.”

Kate stared at Zoran’s back as he walked away.

Takumi finished filleting his
karei
and tried his hand at the larger
hirame.
He saved the heads, of course. He also rummaged through the guts of the larger fish until he located a grayish-pink organ shaped like an ear. Later, he would marinate it in sake, grind it to a paste with soy sauce, and use it as a sauce. In Japan,
hirame
sashimi served with the fish’s own pulverized liver is a delicacy.

Suddenly Zoran bellowed out instructions.

“In three minutes I want you ready to make
kappa-maki
!” he yelled. Cucumber rolls. “Come on, come on!”

Kate gritted her teeth and rushed to set up for sushi. A couple of the students ran to the refrigerator and yanked out cucumbers. Zoran snatched one and started cutting it himself. Marcos was still fidgeting with his flatfish.

“Come on, Marcos!” Zoran yelled. “The customer has just ordered
kappa-maki.
” No response. Zoran glared. “Earth to Marcos!” Zoran counted down. “Ten, nine, eight, seven…Go! I want two
kappa-maki
on your plate in three minutes!”

The students jabbed their fingers in water, clapped, and assembled rolls. Pieces of cucumber tumbled around their cutting boards. The smell of nori and vinegared rice filled the room. When they were mostly finished, Zoran interrupted them.

“Okay, stop what you’re doing,” he said. “Is your station clean? You’re going to make a California roll—one
futo-maki
and one
ura-maki.
” A big roll and an inside-out roll.

Zoran counted down again. “Ten, nine, eight, seven…Go!”

Claps punctuated the silence. Zoran circled the room, hands behind his back.

“Kate,” Zoran yelled, “needs work on cutting!”

She frowned, lowered her head, and kept working. One by one the students completed their rolls and stepped back from the table.

“How was that for a wake-up?” Zoran shouted. He surveyed the table. Suddenly he hung his head and spoke in a soft voice. “I just wanted to see you make sushi before I leave.”

During cleanup, Zoran disappeared upstairs. When he returned, he made an announcement, “There is a catering internship tomorrow. Who wants it?”

“I do!” Marcos said. He needed internship hours badly.

“Go upstairs and talk to Toshi.”

Meanwhile, Kate forced herself to sharpen her knife. Zoran hovered nearby.

When she’d finished, she changed into tight jeans and a tank top and strode out to the parking lot. She pulled a soccer ball from her Mustang and kicked it hard against the wall of the restaurant. She was frustrated with herself, and with Zoran. It seemed as if he deliberately gave her encouragement and then followed it with criticism—building her up just to knock her back down. At the same time, she knew he was trying to help her succeed. Her own shortcomings hadn’t helped things, especially when it came to her knives. On top of all that, she hadn’t heard back from Jeff about the nightclub job. She worried that Jeff didn’t think she was good enough.

Marcos came outside in his chef’s pants, a T-shirt, and bare feet. He smoked a cigarette and watched Kate bust out a repertoire of fancy soccer moves. She bounced, sprinted, and juggled the ball with her feet and knees. The top of her pink thong underwear showed above the waistline of her pants.