All Things Sushi

All Things Sushi — Part 1

July 24, 2018

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Pretty much everyone nowadays is familiar with sushi and the hate it or love it atmosphere that surrounds it. Sushi has been known by many names in even more countries over the centuries. Some of the earliest records of the preparation of sushi date back as far as the first and second century AD and became known as naresushi. Instead of consisting of fish and rice to be eating together, the fish was preserved in a mixture of fermented rice and salt to keep it stable for storage. Fast forward a couple millenia and the dish is now a worldwide phenomena and staple recognized by just about everyone the world over. What started out as a humble method of keeping food from going bad has turned into a culture all its own that one way or another engenders a strong sense of feeling in the average person, be it love or disgust. Regardless of personal tastes and individual stances on the topic of sushi, its health benefits and cultural impact are undeniable. Throughout the entirety of Asia, many parts of the Pacific and now most first world nations, sushi has a place to take root, grow, change and spread. From traditional Japanese preparation, to new wave, international, artistic and even postmodern variants, sushi is now as commonplace as steak and potatoes on the dinner menu.

For a history on the development and spread of sushi we will take a look at an article from wikipedia.

Early history

The earliest form of sushi, a dish today known as narezushi, has its probable origin with paddy fields along the Mekong river in Southeast Asia. The prototypical narezushi is made by lacto-fermenting fish with salt and rice in order to control putrefaction.[1] Spreading southwards down the Mekong, narezushi then entered Austronesia. In Japan the dish's distribution overlaps with the introduction of wet-field rice cultivation during the Yayoi period.[1][4] Narezushi appears in the Chinese dictionary in the 2nd century AD as the character sa (鮓, pickled fish with salt and rice),[5] which was during a period in which Han people were expanding south of the Yangtze river, adopting the food from the non-Han minority peoples.[1]

The Japanese preferred to eat fish with rice, known as namanare or namanari (生成, なまなれ, なまなり, semi-fermented). During the Muromachi period namanare was the most popular type of sushi. Namanare was partly raw fish wrapped in rice, consumed fresh, before it changed flavor. This new way of consuming fish was no longer a form of preservation but rather a new dish in Japanese cuisine. During the Edo period, a third type of sushi was introduced, haya-zushi (早寿司, 早ずし, fast sushi). Haya-zushi was assembled so that both rice and fish could be consumed at the same time, and the dish became unique to Japanese culture. It was the first time that rice was not being used for fermentation. Rice was now mixed with vinegar, with fish, vegetables and dried food stuff added. This type of sushi is still very popular today. Each region utilizes local flavors to produce a variety of sushi that has been passed down for many generations. Today's style of nigirizushi (握り寿司), consisting of an oblong mound of rice with a slice of fish draped over it, became popular in Edo (contemporary Tokyo) in the 1820s or 1830s. One common story of nigirizushi's origins is of the chef Hanaya Yohei (1799-1858), who invented or perfected the technique in 1824 at his shop in Ryōgoku.[6] After the Great Kanto earthquake in 1923, nigirizushi chefs were displaced from Edo throughout Japan, popularizing the dish throughout the country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sushi http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

In our next piece we will further explore the history and development of sushi as a concept and a cultural dish. Look forward to All Things Sushi — Part 2!

History Author: Kinja