Hochner Family Blog

We started with the written test in the morning.  There were 10 questions.  How to cut the Anago (Eel) and the Hirame (flat fish). How to defreeze a block of Maguro (tuna). What to take care when you are behind the counter. What does "Edomae" mean, etc.

It went smoothly and everybody finished in 30 minutes.

Then we had the Maki sushi (Sushi roll) test.  We had to make 4 Hoso maki (thin roll), cut them in 6 pieces and place them on a plate.  The check points were: finish within 3 minutes, rolls must be well closed, same height for all the pieces and good general appearance.  Everybody finished on time and the teacher checked the details.

The 3rd test was about making one serving of sushi with 7 Nigiri (sushi) and 1 Hoso maki (thin roll).  The check points were: finish within 5 minutes, the rice should not exceed the size of the piece of fish, nice shape, well presented.

Kawasumi Sensei checked all the details and explained them to all of us.  

Here are my colleagues with their respective Sushi.

We all passed!

Here are the results and the lunch.

We continued the test in the afternoon. 

The 4th test was about Sashimi Santen Mori (dish with 3 types of raw fish). The check points were: Cut the fish and place them on a plate within 5 minutes. Cut them properly, place them nicely, make a good balance on the plate.  We had to work with a Tai (sea bream), a Maguro (tuna), and a Saba (mackerel).  Cutting the fish didn't take much time, but placing them on the place did.  Specially placing the Tuna (with thin cut of Daikon (Japanese radish)) under each group of fish and making a general balance was quite difficult.

The last test was about the Nigiri Sushi.  This was the most difficult test.  We had to make a minimum of 18 Sushi within 3 min (yes, this is one sushi every 10 second).  On top of that, the teacher checked the look of the sushi and removed the bad ones.  We then removed the fish meat (called neta) and weighted the rice — it had to be between 16 and 18 g. 

My results were that 18 Sushi made within the time allocation, but only 12 of them had the correct weight, 6 of them were too small. 

After the tests, we were all exhausted, but we still had to do some work with Anago (eel). 

We put sake and salt on the Anago (eel), and cooked them on a fish grill instead of boiling them.  Then we ate them during the meeting.  It was so good and I would have loved a nice cold beer to go with.

It was a very long day....

# posted by Famille Hochner @ 1:20 AM