鯛 (Tai); Red Snapper

In any cuisine there are certain dishes or ingredients that automatically elicit respect. If what's in front of you has anything to do with foie gras, foam, Belgium, molds, whole animals, or a named blue cheese, even the non-foodie is going to view the dish on a different level than football-night buffalo wings. What's interesting is when you start crossing oceans and cultures and are proudly presented with food that might provoke emotions ranging from disbelief to horror in your own culture.

Japan is big on fish. You heard it here first. Fish get a respect that transcends their actual role as a foodstuff in a way that chicken and pork will never have, no matter how big of a role they play in the modern Japanese diet. In addition, the more a fish looks like it just leapt out of the ocean and onto your plate the better. A sanitized, cooked fillet is the lowest rung on the fish latter, 活け造り (ikezukuri, a fish filleted alive and presented still gasping), the highest. Fish guts, testes, eggs, and heads are all eaten with gusto. The guest of honor is traditionally presented with the head of the fish being served.

Tai (red snapper) in particular has been a celebration meal staple for a long time. The god of luck/happiness Ebisu (dude on the Ebisu beer cans) is pictured holding a tai. It is a pearly pink color, and red also being a symbol of good luck, it is often the main course at weddings, birthdays, etc. One popular dish that my restaurant just did a run of is 鯛飯 (tai meshi, red snapper rice) in which the rice is cooked in fish stock rather than water and served with the tai on top. The less deconstructed the tai the more high-class the dish; so a really expensive place might serve a whole, non-filleted tai. Other methods (listed in progressively less awe-inspiring order) are splitting the tai in half, using just a fillet, or mixing shredded meat into the rice.

I believe the average American would be pretty horrified at opening the lid to find an open-mouthed fish staring up at them (by the way, the eyes turn white and pop out of the sockets when heated, and if you're not careful, disconnect from the head and roll into the rice; very uncool presentation). The dish itself is nice, but to the disinterested palate a bit underwhelming considering the hype surrounding it. Tai is a good fish. So are a lot of other cheaper and easier-to-cook fish. But this works both ways; a former Japanese teacher confided in me that when she went to America and saw a whole Thanksgiving turkey squatting on the holiday table, she felt physically ill. There's a whole lot of culture and expectation dictating how we feel about a meal. Food isn't just about taste.

Squidward's Revenge

I don't know why me and squid just can't seem to come to terms. This is what I found in the last squid I cleaned, and as I pulled it out of the dead bundle of rubber and ink and slime you can bet I got the willies. The complete scrub-your-hand-on-your-hip, little-shudders-running-down-your-spine, hairs-standing-on-end heebie-jeebies experience. I am proud of the fact that I didn't audibly yelp when I discovered that face-huggers infect more than just humans. After I regained control of myself I set it on top of a fridge to show the other cooks later and forgot about it; it dried out for a few days and I found it again. I stuck it in my bag to take home and show my SO and it stunk my bag up terribly and attracted my cats and I had to throw it away before anyone but Fugu Senpai saw it. This blurry photo is the only evidence remaining to prove that the alien invasion is once again underway.

蝦夷馬糞雲丹 (Hokkaido Sea Urchin)

Sea urchin and poop. What do they have in common, other than both of them being something the average American does not stick in their mouth?

雲丹 (uni, sea urchin ovaries) are one of the 'three great delicacies under the heavens' (天下の三大珍味), along with karasumi (salted dried mullet roe) and konowata (fermented sea slug intestines). From personal experience, I can tell you it's the best of the three. It can be used in sauces or steamed, then deep-fried, but that's for the inferior stuff. Really good uni, like everything nice in Japanese cuisine, should be eaten raw.

There are two main kinds of uni: 紫雲丹 (purple uni) and 馬糞雲丹 (horse poop uni). Purple uni has long, delicate spines and lighter-colored ovaries, and horse poop uni (named for it's shape) has darker orange ovaries with a finer texture and is the favored variety.

Uni usually comes pre-packaged lined up in little trays, but we got our hands on a box of live uni at the restaurant. It's the first time I've ever dealt with them in the original form. We cut the tops off and served them as-is with a spoon. The staff was given one to split. The liquid inside was like seawater but not bitter, and the ovaries were smooth and very mild, with a sweetness that hit you in the aftertaste. Truly excellent.

Eyeballs

I know you've been wanting to see this ever since the squid post. Here are the eyeballs in person, along with the beaks and unwanted long sections of the tentacles. Eyeballs have been following me today- after completing this job, I politely refused the offer of eating as part of my dinner a fish eye rivaling the size of my palm. You're supposed to put the whole thing in your mouth, squish and drink up, and pull out the surrounding cartilage ring. Dude.

RIP TMNT

Any job entails you do stuff you don't wanna do, and it gets more hands-on and gritty the further down the social chain you go. Being a chef, despite the celebrity status it is often given, is a blue-collar job. You don your uniform, scrub and wash and chop and work with your hands for long, unusual hours and weekends to serve the people with normal jobs. You are also occasionally faced with moral dilemmas.

Chefs in America cook food. Chefs in Japan prepare food, the preparation of which may or may not require cooking. This means you need fresh materials, and fresh means either extremely recently deceased or still living when you get ahold of it. One of the more gruesome tasks is dispatching turtles, which are made into a 鍋物 (one-pot dish), several of which have come our way recently. You have to cut off the head, slice up the still-moving body, clean the meat, and get it in the pot. The heart keeps beating until it is actually simmered, even when the turtle is in pieces. (You have to be careful of the head too, which can continue to bite for up to half an hour after you cut it off.) Octopus is another grisly job. Casually slaughtering an animal that may have lived up to 10 years or is estimated to have the intelligence of a 2-year-old isn't easy and may not even be right. I have pretty strong vegetarian tendencies and almost never prepare meat at home, and I'm pretty torn about how to take all this. I've taken the stand that I'm still the apprentice and need to know about this stuff, even if I decide not to do it or serve it when I break out on my own professionally; basically a suspension of decision. I also decided not to post the picture of the turtle seconds after it was killed. Turtle blood is as red as human blood.

As Slimy As It Sounds

Ahh, squid. I learned how to cut open the body today and get out the beak and eyeballs without squishing them and getting eye juice all over the meat. I'm rarely grossed out by the shit I see anymore but carrying a handful of squid eyeballs and mouths and red juice to the garbage in my hands had me performing this mantra: 'I do not have a handful of eyeballs that look like human eyes I do not have eyeballs in my hands I have EYEBALLS in my HANDS oh no GET IT OFF ME AHHHH!!' Luckily the trash can only took a few seconds to reach.

I can deal with cooked squid; I've gotten used to the rubbery texture. But even though I've consumed my fair share of raw squid during my stint here, I just don't like it. There is a fairly popular dish called 塩辛 (shiokara) that we serve, involving cutting raw squid up into thin strips and mixing it with a soupy mess made of miso and the innards of the squid that have been rubbed through a mesh screen. It's as horrible as it sounds. Let that sit in your fridge 3 days and you've got something that rivals natto for smell.