Fingers and chopsticks are traditional. Forks and knives are not.
Sushi has names and customs that challenge the imagination. Creative sushi chefs (Itamae) are always coming up with something new and different. People love it. In the U.S. alone, the sushi industry is worth $22 billion, with over 4,000 sushi shops around the country. A sushi chef is highly skilled – those individuals go through up to ten years of rigorous training to become a master itamae.
Where did this versatile, beautiful-to-look-at-and-eat food come from? Most of us know the answer: Japan.
Wrong.
It’s like the California Roll originating in the U.S. (it came from Canada) and French Fries coming from France (they came from Belgium), sushi has taken some colorful twists and turns.
Go back to Southeast Asia, over two thousand years ago. They needed a way to preserve fish. They gutted, salted, and wrapped fresh fish in rice. Fermented rice produces an acid (lactic acid bacilli) that prevents spoiling. After many months, the rice was discarded and the fish eaten. It was called narezushi.
According to Tori Avey in PBS, “this process is sometimes referred to as pickling, and is the reason why the sushi kitchen is called a tsuke-ba or pickling place.”
The idea spread to China during the second and third centuries. Han-Chinese eagerly adopted foods from other cultures. They called narezushi “fish pickled by rice and salt”.
The technique finally arrived in Japan in the eighth century. The Japanese created namanare or partially fermented sushi. According to Wikipedia, “the invention of namanare sushi changed from a preserved fish food to a food where fish and rice are eaten together.”
