Sushi is a Japanese food consisting of cooked
vinegared rice combined with other ingredients,
seafood, vegetables and sometimes tropical fruits.
Ingredients and forms of sushi presentation vary
widely, but the ingredient which all sushi have in
common is rice (also referred to as shari or sumeshi.
Sushi can be prepared with either brown or white
rice. Sushi is often prepared with raw seafood, but
some common varieties of sushi use cooked
ingredients or are vegetarian. Raw fish (or
occasionally other meat) sliced and served without
rice is called "sashimi".
Sushi is often served with pickled ginger , wasabi,
and soy sauce. Popular garnishes are often made
using daikon. |
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History of Sushi
Sushi by Hiroshige in Edo period
The original type of sushi, known today as nare-zushi was
first made in Southeast Asia, possibly along what is now
known as the Mekong River. The term sushi comes from an
archaic grammatical form no longer used in other contexts,
and literally means "sour-tasting", a reflection of its
historic origin as a fermented food. The oldest form of
sushi in Japan, narezushi, is still made by wrapping fish in
soured fermenting rice, which causes the fish proteins to
break down into their constituent amino acids. The
fermenting rice and fish have both a sour and an umami
taste.
Contemporary Japanese sushi has little resemblance to the
traditional lacto-fermented rice dish. Originally, when the
fermented fish was taken out of the rice, only the fish was
consumed while the fermented rice was discarded.[2] The
strong-tasting and smelling funazushi, a kind of narezushi
made near Lake Biwa in Japan, resembles the traditional
fermented dish. Beginning in the Muromachi period
(1336–1573) of Japan, vinegar was added to the mixture for
better taste and preservation. The vinegar accentuated the
rice's sourness and was known to increase its shelf life,
allowing the fermentation process to be shortened and
eventually abandoned. In the following centuries, sushi in
Osaka evolved into oshi-zushi. The seafood and rice were
pressed using wooden (usually bamboo) molds. By the mid 18th
century, this form of sushi had reached Edo (contemporary
Tokyo).
The contemporary version, internationally known as "sushi",
was created by Hanaya Yohei (1799–1858) at the end of the
Edo period in Edo. Sushi invented by Hanaya was an early
form of fast food that was not fermented (therefore prepared
quickly) and could be conveniently eaten with one's hands.
The size of the previous sushi was about three times as
large as contemporary ones. Originally, this sushi was known
as Edomae zushi because it used freshly caught fish in the
Edo-mae (Edo Bay or Tokyo Bay). Though the fish used in
modern sushi no longer usually comes from Tokyo Bay, it is
still formally known as Edomae nigirizushi.
The Oxford English Dictionary notes the earliest written
mention of sushi in English in an 1893 book, A Japanese
Interior, where it mentions sushi as "a roll of cold rice
with fish, sea-weed, or some other flavoring". However,
there is also mention of sushi in a Japanese-English
dictionary from 1873, and an 1879 article on Japanese
cookery in the journal Notes and Queries. |
