Text 8771, 100 rader
Skriven 2006-12-13 23:35:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
     Kommentar till en text av JIM WELLER
Ärende: Del Mar hotel 674
=========================
 -=> Jim Weller said to Carol Shenkenberger <=-

 CS> Lady looked at Charlotte and warned,
 CS> thats a Miso soup then broke out laughing when Charlotte answered her
 CS> in Japanese saying 'oh goodie!  What else is in it?').
 JW> Good for her.

Dittoes.

 JW> Roslind also had sushi this weekend. She had a girl's night out with
 JW> her daughter, her daughter in law and the two grandgirl cousins. After
 JW> some discussion they picked the Japanese place for supper. Even 22
 JW> month old Alex prefers "fis" to Macdonalds. (She had a vote too.)

Precocious and expensive, looks like.

 JW> sushi. Everything got split up for sharing 5 ways. Little Alex will
 JW> tackle anything as long as there's not a lot of wasabi on it. Her
 JW> favourite thing? Tako balls! Even after Neekha told her what an octopus
 JW> looked like! Alex can't pronounce octopus yet but she can say tako
 JW> clearly which pleased the waitress.

How can anyone not like tako?

 CS> whale blubber soup (not really whale, some other fatty fish portion
 CS> made to be like whale).
 JW> I can't think of a fish that's like whale. Maybe you really had whale!
 
I was thinking the same thing ... but I recently had
"super white tuna" (escolar), which might have been
the fattiest fish I ever put in my mouth. See report
below.

=

After a rehearsal my friend Ellen and I were kind of peckish,
so we found the only non-fast-food restaurant open late in
the neighborhood, Kame Sushi in Beverly. It's got mixed notices,
but beggars can't be choosers. The salmon, tuna, and octopus
looked pretty good, and there was this waxy white stuff ...

Ellen keeps Kosher, so the octopus (and other things that
really called my name) were right out. I ordered tuna (the
regular kind), salmon, amberjack (kanpachi), and escolar
nigiri, avocado and pickle maki, and yellowtail sashimi
(hamachi). Neither of us had eaten lately.

The kanpachi was out (turns out it's out of season until
next month), so the chef suggested kingfish as a substitute.
It was really wonderful - all the taste of mackerel without
the fishy aftertaste, a wonderful tender texture. The chef
prepared it with ginger, scallion, and sesame seeds instead
of wasabi. It had the skin on and looked rather like saba,
but the taste and texture were much more refined.

Ellen doesn't eat salmon because of the parasite danger; I
pointed out that most likely the stuff had been flash frozen,
killing any bugs; barring that, one can see the things without
a microscope; and if any should get past, they likely wouldn't
survive a trip through a human digestive tract. And if they
did, one could always sue the sushi parlor. The salmon was
excellent.

The maki were pretty normal, although the oshinko was sweeter
and less puckery than usual, and Ellen claimed that the avocado
was especially delicious; I pointed out a touch of ginger in
that maki, and she countered by noting a few sesame seeds.

Unfortunately the tuna tasted slightly fishy and had seen
better days. I added extra wasabi (something I seldom do),
and all seemed okay.

The yellowtail sashimi came as five big, tender slabs; not
the best in the world, but nonetheless quite fine, as it
should at $13 a pop.

The main reason I am writing is to report on the escolar,
aka super white tuna, which was the waxy white stuff that
I had seen. It's pretty neat - the sushi is prepared with
the white belly skin on, and the meat, though extremely
oily, is also completely white. The experience is quite
something - the texture is of butter, and the taste reminds
one of foie gras. Totally luxurious. And it makes you fart.
Oh, does it. I went on the Web later and discovered that
it's 20% fat, and much of this fat is polymerized in such
a way as to be made indigestible. So the effect is as of a
natural Olestra. Including all the effects. I'm still
suffering 24 hours later.

We had a quite respectable but sort of generic white wine,
the Pinot Gris of Bodegas Lurton (Mendoza, Argentina) -
it was one of the first wines I've had of which pretty
much all I can say is that it tastes like wine. Okay, it
had some stone fruit and spice, but that was all subsumed
into a neutral impression. Its relative facelessness went
perfectly with the sushi.

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