Hochner Family Blog

Today is the final day of my course at the Sushi Academy.
Everybody was a bit tensed. And, as usual, we had a briefing, the final one.

Then we started to fill the refrigerated display area with pieces of fish.  We had Maguro (tuna), Kanpachi  (young yellow tail), Sake (salmon), Sayori (halfbeak), Tai (sea bream), Hirame (flat fish).  As "Hikarimono" (shiny fish, which taste more fishy...), Saba (mackerel), Kohada (gizzard shad), Aji (jack mackerel). As shellfish, Akagai (red clam), Akagai no himo (another part of the red clam), Miru Gai, Hamaguri (clam).  And the rest, the usual items, Ika (squid), Amaebi (sweet shrimp), Ikura (salmon roe), Tobiko (flying fish roe).  The cooked fish, Anago (conger eel), Ebi (prawn), and the Dashimaki Tamago (rolled omelet).  In addition, each one of us had to prepare some ingredients for the Rolls.

We finished the preparation 30 minutes before the opening.  Imai san was tensed and started to worry about his performance....

Here, we got our first customers, Gwendoline and Patrick.
"Irashaimase!" (Welcome!) 

— this was the beginning of my life as a Sushi Master.
Talking to the customers and making sushi at the same time is quite difficult.  On top of that, you have to pay attention to other customers as well.  I got the order "Omakase" (Chef's choice) so that made my task a bit easier.  I started with Sake (salmon) and Kanpachi (young yellow tail).


Everything went quite smooth, and at the end of the day, Goto san made us ….. some nice Sushi. She is the assistant of the course and is also a Japanese restaurant owner.  She was one of the student 6 month ago and now she is helping the course.

Ikura (salmon roe), Sayori (halfbeak) and Toro (fatty tuna).




At the end of this long day, we all received our certificate from Nishie san, president of the Academy and Kawasumi sensei, our teacher and world champion of decoration sushi!
We all made it to the end!

As a present, we received a bottle of Sushi Vinegar.  As I mentioned in the beginning, vinegar, rice, and shoyu are the three most important factors to determine the taste of Sushi.  This sushi vinegar is the one used during the course and it's already mixed with sugar and salt.  We are used to this taste (once we had a different sushi rice during the course, and everybody notified the difference of the taste), and it's a pleasure to take this taste back home.

These three weeks passed really quickly, and we just went through everything once. This is just the beginning and from now on we have to practice based on what we learned.
Some of the students already go back to their country this weekend. We promised to keep in touch and to make our Sushi Dream a reality.

For myself, I am still missing a lot of practice.  I have only 5 month left before we leave Japan.  I'm interested in learning more traditional Japanese cooking.  Now I'm looking for other courses and I'll continue the report.

# posted by Famille Hochner @ 2:03 AM