The sushi chef doing the unthinkable – intentionally serving fish gone bad
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Remarkable Living
The sushi chef doing the unthinkable – intentionally serving fish gone bad
About restauranteurs won't think twice about throwing out nutrient they think has gone bad. But Tokyo chef Koji Kimura has turned obstacles into opportunities.
For the intrepid foodie, aged sushi offers an umami like no other. (Photo: Threesixzero Productions)
11 April 2022 06:30AM (Updated: 04 Jul 2022 03:58PM)
When Chef Koji Kimura started Sushi Kimura eatery in 2005, he was confident that he would have enough patrons to appreciate his sushi-making skills; he didn't reckon he needed media coverage or whatever form of advertising. Three years into the concern, the number of customers dwindled. That was when he realised that he had "no weapon in his sushi," he said.
Since at that place were no customers, he had to throw out the fish, but he hesitated as the fish was large and costly. He thought "there should exist some parts that I could swallow." He was surprised to find that while the fish didn't odour skillful, it had an intense flavor, something he had never tasted earlier.
He took a gamble, thinking that this could be his "weapon". He said: "I decided to try and remove the aroma and retain the sweetness of the fish to make sushi". For five years, he went through many rounds of trial and fault – removing the unpleasant unwanted elements and then that he would get an "umami kick, that is a few times greater than the original amount".
Every time he bought fish, he would go through "a opposite idea process" to try to discover a way to save the fish. Kimura expressed: "It'south not the type of fish that determines how long it should exist aged. It depends on individual fish because each i has eaten dissimilar things and lived in unlike areas".
He went on to explain that because fish alive for unlike number of years, he has to discern the deviation, and control the corporeality of salt, water and temperature accordingly, in deciding how each fish should be anile. Fish ageing is a plush and time-consuming process, taking between 40 and 50 days under varying weather to consummate.
Not but that, the piece of work is too tiring and difficult, says Kimura, who has non taken a unmarried twenty-four hour period off for the terminal fourteen years. Undaunted, he is determined to bask the procedure. He laughs that while the ladies accept fun going to Gucci and shopping for handbags, he goes to "my 'Gucci' fish store and say, 'fish, fish, fish – buy!'. He added: "I live a life that allows me to have fun shopping for fish."
Buying fish gives him happiness, he says, but information technology also "turns into the happiness of preparing fish. Your happiness from eating my food becomes my happiness once again."
Kimura believes he has not mastered the art of ageing sushi. He explained: "The style I age the fish is just the first prototype. I think at that place's a lot I tin can improve on." He is quick to acknowledge that at 48, it would be too tiring for him to become dorsum to the beginning and start from scratch. For now, he will stick to what he knows, and make minor improvements if he finds easier ways of doing information technology.
But he says his concept has non changed and he will go on to "serve something that doesn't exist in any other part of the world, but unique to Kimura", and that includes serving anile sushi, which has a more full-bodied umami deliciousness than sushi made with fresh fish.
He added: "This doesn't be in whatsoever other sushi eating house in the world."
Adapted from the serial Remarkable Living. Lookout man full episodes on CNA, every Sunday at 7pm.
READ> The chef making his own caviar from sturgeon in Japan for Singapore diners
Source: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/remarkableliving/sushi-chef-aged-sushi-koji-kimura-tokyo-japan-239361
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