[WEB ARTICLE] Kimata Syoya (JO1) - Elle Gourmet (6 April 2023) (Part 3)

[dreamweavernyx]

Part 3!

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Chomping straight into a block of fish he bought?!

[Photo 26]

Kimata: Speaking of which, I love fish so much, I’ve bought blocks of sashimi-grade fish… and taken a bite straight out of the block without slicing it, before. (laughs)

Chef: Eh~ (laughs) You bit straight through it?

Kimata: Yes! I bit straight through it.

Chef: Ohhh~ (laughs)

Kimata: Of course, normally I would slice it up properly and eat it, but I love fish so much that there was a time where I thought I wanted to try eating it anime-style.

Chef: It’s great that you love fish. Next time, let’s go to the (fish) market together!

Kimata: I’d love to, I’d love to, I’d love to!!! Speaking of which, there was once I bought half of a giant salmon fish, and fileted it by myself at home. Somehow, there’s a desire in me to eat humongous fish.

Ohira: You’re amazing, Syoya. You’re really doing a lot, aren’t you. (laughs)

Kimata: Even when we were in South Korea, I went to a prawn farm for some video contents we were filming, and I grabbed some of them straight out of the water and ate them as-is. I’d love to do something like that again!

[Photo 27]

Chef: Next up is an asari clam croquette. Split it in half with your chopsticks, and eat it with salt and wasabi. It’s already well flavoured on its own, so add the salt and wasabi to taste.

Kimata: Wasabi on a croquette!

Chef: If I served it with Worcestershire sauce* it would become like a Western dish, so I’ve served it with wasabi.

[ T/N: In Japan, the term “sauce” is commonly used to refer to the Worcestershire sauce commonly served with fried items such as croquettes or tonkatsu. ]

Kimata: You often hear of crab cream croquettes, but I’ve never had a clam croquette.

Ohira: I’m digging in! Ah, the cross-section of it is a little yellow.

Chef: We do knead the clams a little, so that’s the colour of the liver.

[Photo 28]

Kimata: That looks good! And like it would go well with wasabi. Alright, I’ll put on a lot (of wasabi)… Yum! It’s so creamy. It tastes like clam chowder. It tastes quite like something from a foreign cuisine.

Ohira: This is delicious. Syoya, did you know? I casually dabbed a little wasabi on it before I ate it, and it was delicious.

Kimata: Wasabi is delicious, you know.

Ohira: Now I’m thinking that I should just casually dab wasabi on my food when I eat it. (laughs)

[Photo 29]

Kimata: It doesn’t go up your nose even if you eat it with something other than ootoro, huh. The flavour of it is amazing.

Chef: The good thing about fresh wasabi is that it doesn’t go up your nose. You can just simply enjoy the fragrance of it.

Ohira: For me, I guess I like fresh wasabi, then. I ate the wasabi just on its own, and even that was delicious.

Kimata: Eh! You ate the wasabi on its own. You’ve grown so much in this short span of time!

[Photo 30]

Kimata: Wow! It’s here! The preparations for the nigiri sushi stage start now, I see. So many toppings have been laid out~

Chef: Today’s tuna comes from Katsuura City in Chiba prefecture.

Ohira: This one? The colour is really nice.

[Photo 31]

Kimata: It’s really pink on the inside. I’m drooling.

Chef: I briefly blanched* it before curing it.

[ T/N: The term used is “yubiki”, which is a common technique in sushi-making where boiling hot water is briefly poured over the fish. This cooks the fish a small amount, allowing for a different texture to be enjoyed. The process of briefly cooking followed by chilling the fish is similar to blanching (e.g. vegetables), but the cooking time for yubiki tends to be shorter than blanching and does not involve the fish being fully submerged in boiling water. ]

Kimata: The fat of the chutoro (medium-fatty tuna) is amazing.

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Ending off the cooked-items segment is a vegetable maki roll stuffed with personality

[Photo 32]

Chef: This is the last dish. It’s a vegetable maki roll filled with bamboo shoots, Italian parsley, potato chips made from new potatoes, sea grapes*, and miso made with angelica shoots.

[ T/N: Sea grapes are a kind of seaweed that has bubbles growing on the stems, making it look like seaweed. ]

Ohira: Woah~ There’s so much stuffed inside!

Chef: I must apologise at this juncture to Kimata-san (laughs), because there’s no fish in this roll, only vegetables. Our restaurant also has a vegetarian course, you know.

Kimata: But even the vegetables themselves have been prepared in so many different ways – some are deep-fried, some are pan-fried! The (chef’s) skill when rolling up the sushi roll was so good, that was also like its own form of art.

[Photo 33]

Kimata: Woah, sea grapes! So this is how the roll features sea grapes.

Ohira: Wow~

Kimata: I really, really love sea grapes.

[Photo 34]

Ohira: Woah, the texture is so crunchy

Kimata: Is this potato?

Chef: Yes, it’s potato chips made from new potatoes.

Kimata: Eh, how do you fry them?

Chef: We slice them thinly…

Ohira: Are you thinking of making them on your own? (laughs) It provides a good accent.

[Photo 35]

Kimata: Apparently the only seasoning this has is sesame oil and salt. That’s why there’s a roasted flavour to it, which whets the appetite.

Ohira: Yum~ How stylish, to have something like this close off the cooked items.

[Photo 36]

The long-awaited nigiri sushi time

Chef: Before heading to the nigiri sushi, I’ll plate up some pickled ginger.

Kimata: Yay! Ah, what an artistic shape it’s in. The restaurants I’ve visited up till now don’t really serve (pickled ginger) in a shape such as this.

Ohira: Man, how pretty!

Chef: I will now start making the sushi. Ohira-san, shall I include wasabi in yours?

Ohira: ….Yes, please!!

[Photo 37]

Chef: Well then, first up we have the gizzard shad (kohada).

Kimata: I love gizzard shad! It’s my favourite among the blue-backed fish* - either gizzard shad, or mackerel.

[ T/N: Blue-backed fish, or “ao-zakana”, refers to fish that have blue skin on their backs and silvery skin on their bellies. This is a less commonly-used term in the sushi context; usually in sushi the categorization would feature “hikari-mono” (lit. “glittering objects”), which refers to any fish with silvery skin, including blue-backed fish. ]

Ohira: It’s gleaming!

[Photo 38]

Kimata: Oh yeah, let’s do a sushi cheers! I do this in all of the issues for this column.

Both: Cheers~

Kimata: Ohhhh. It’s been nicely cured in vinegar. I quite like the taste of vinegar-cured (fish).

Chef: Next up is the flounder (hirame).

Ohira: I’ll dig in! … Delicious. Ah, the wasabi plays a key role here. It’s doing a good job.

Kimata: Ah, you’ve already achieved that stage (of wasabi appreciation)?

Ohira: As I continued eating, the taste of the wasabi became one I found delicious.

Kimata: Now you’ve become fully able to enjoy wasabi, huh.

Ohira: Yeah, I can enjoy it now. Seriously, I’m really moved. Today’s been really…