Sushi and sashimi are the best-known specialties of Japanese cuisine, but Japanese cuisine goes much further. These are five dishes that you will find in many Japanese restaurants.
Most Westerners will have trouble if you ask them to list five typical Japanese foods that aren’t sushi or sashimi. Perhaps the Japanese will not be able to name more than paella or Iberian ham if they are asked to talk about Spanish cuisine. For this reason, and although at the moment it is not easy to travel to Japan, we are going to explain which are the five most popular Japanese specialties, in addition to sushi.
Sushi and sashimi: the hocus-pocus of Japanese cuisine
With these small bites of raw fish, the Japanese have conquered the gastronomic world. From Lisbon to New Delhi, from Copenhagen to Sydney, there is not a single metropolis where sushi is not known and places that prepare it proliferate. The Japanese communities in Brazil, Peru and California are famous and each of them has also spread its own specialties. The Japanese call sushi to different combinations of rice with fish or seafood (almost always raw), although it is also prepared with vegetables, tortillas and even meat.
They are usually seasoned with freshly grated wasabi (wasabi is a root, not that tube from which a green paste comes out that you see in most Japanese in the West) and soy sauce. Sushi rice has a very special preparation and is mixed with rice vinegar, sugar and salt. Actually, the most complicated thing is preparing the rice. That’s why the Japanese, to know if a restaurant is really good, order an omelette nigiri: the rice and the omelette, both difficult to prepare, will make them clearly see the level of the establishment.
There are many types of sushi, such as makis and temakis , which are rice rolls wrapped in crispy nori seaweed. But the most valued sushi is nigiri: a rice ball topped with a thin slice of fish or seafood. It is common to take ginger to change the flavor from piece to piece. In Japan there are places where they only prepare nigiris with a single ingredient: the height of specialization. His way of seeking perfection by repeating the same act day after day throughout his life.
Laminated cuts of raw fish are called sashimi , although they are also prepared with meat. For example, in the city of Kumamoto horse meat sashimi is very typical. Sashimi does not contain rice and therefore is not sushi. If the raw fish is cut into small cubes and dressed with soy sauce and other seasonings, it is called tartar.
The most commonly used fish and seafood in Japan are amberjack (hamachi), tuna (maguro if it is the loin and toro if it is the belly), mackerel (saba), sea bream (tai), squid (ika), shrimp or prawns (ebi), red clams (akagai), salmon roe (ikura), scallops (hotate) and sea urchins (uni).
Eel (unagi) and conger eel (anago) are also widely used but cooked previously. Knowing these names in Japanese is very useful when traveling to the land of the rising sun. For a Westerner, understanding a menu is an ordeal and in many restaurants they do not speak English, a small fact to keep in mind.