SUSHI!!!!

I love Sushi. I could eat sushi every day and not get tired of it.

My favorite Sushi places:

www.hapasushi.com

www.sushisasadenver.com

www.opalrestaurant.com


The History of Sushi, according to Sushi Man.

History of Sushi

Japan is an island nation, its surrounding seas warmed by Kuroshio, the plankton-rich Japan Current, and abundant with an astonishing variety of fish and shellfish. The island themselves are mountainous, and what little arable land exists is terraced and carefully cultivated to coax rice and a few other crops form the earth. Japan has always fed its dense population from the sea and the rice fields, its cuisine emphasizing what nature provides. Sushi, the combination of raw fish and seasoned rice that seems so exotic to foreigners, is a supremely logical food in Japan.

Sushi began centuries ago in Japan as a method of preserving fish. It is told that the origins of sushi came form countries of Southeastern Asia. Cleaned, raw fish were pressed between layers of salt and weighted with a stone. After a few weeks, the stone was removed and replaced with a light cover, and a few months after that, the fermented fish and rice were considered ready to eat. Some restaurants in Tokyo still serve this original style of sushi, called nare-sushi made with freshwater carp. Its flavor is so strong that it obscures the fish's identity altogether, and nare-sushi is something of an acquired taste.

It wasn't until the eighteenth century that a clever chef named Yohei decided to forego the fermentation and serve sushi in something resembling its present form. It became very popular and two distinct styles emerged Kansai style, from the city of Osaka in the Kansai region, and Edo style, from Tokyo, which was then called Edo. Osaka has always been the commercial capital of Japan, and the rice merchants there developed sushi that consisted primarily of seasoned rice mixed with other ingredients and formed into decorative, edible packages. Tokyo, located on a bay then rich with fish and shellfish, produced nigiri sushi, featuring a select bit of seafood on a small pad of seasoned rice. Although the ornamental sushi of the Kansai region is still very popular, it is nigiri sushi that foreigners are familiar with. Today, even Japanese consider nigiri sushi is the origin of sushi, the truth is different. Kansai sushi(Osaka Sushi) has much more history and techniques than nigiri sushi, few Japanese knows about this fact.