Sushi for Dummies, or scatterbrains perhaps?

Chirashi zushi, literally ‘scattered sushi’, seems to be a dish of compromises. Don’t have enough time to mould your sushi rice into patties and lay a slice of something on it? Just put your toppings on a bowl of sushi rice instead. Got some cuts of fish that are not aesthetically pleasing enough to grace ‘sushi’? Lay them artistically on top of each other and next to other toppings in a bowl and hope nobody notices. Got some spare vegetables that need using up? Boil them lightly and add them too.

When researching this dish there were so many recipes: like Nabe (week 5), the constituent ingredients – or in this case, the guu (‘bits’ i.e. the toppings) – are infinitely variable. We were meant to do the Hina Matsuri (Doll Festival) version, but I had some veggies that needed using up and so went for the ‘whatever toppings you can find’ approach. I thought this dish was ‘Edomae chirashi zushi’ usually described as using raw toppings, but I cooked my egg, renkon (lotus root) and nanohana (rape blossom), so does that count?

There’s another thing that puzzles me about sushi in general (and it wasn't until today that I found out that ‘sushi’ refers to just the rice, I thought it was the rice and topping): the ubiquity of polished white rice is a relatively ‘modern’ condition, so did the Japanese use to eat brown rice, or genmai sushi? I thought I’d try it, since we don’t have any white rice in the house these days (I try to avoid white bread in England, and white rice is just the same – a processed grain stripped of nutrients and fibre…). It didn’t work so well, with the vinegar/sugar/water mixture merely soaking the rice rather than making it stick together, so I added less than was recommended. While I’m on rice, it is also funny how few people cook their rice on their hob, favouring the suihanki or electric rice cooker. We went to our friends’ flat last night for the most amazing wagyuu (Japanese beef) I’ve tasted, served with lovely steaming white rice. After one mouthful of rice, my husband asked ‘did you cook this with gas?’ ‘Yes’ was the answer. Not only does it taste better but it is far quicker than doing it in the rice cooker and not difficult.

I lightly boiled the renkon slices and nananoha, microwaved the egg in a special plastic star-shaped container (cutely shaped food is big bento box business in Japan) and bought a selection of sashimi from the supermarket for my topping guu. Decoration, apparently, is key in chirashi zushi, so I laid the ingredients on as prettily as I could without getting too impatient. Later I thought I could have been more creative, threading the nanohana through the renkon holes and sticking them in horizontally to make some sort of 3D chirashi zushi forest.

On the side, in dishes from my sister-in-law, was a little wasabi and soy sauce. Finally, in a nod to the Hina Matsuri, I bought a bottle of children’s amazake, literally ‘sweet sake’, a welcome non-alcoholic drink after the past few days of indulgence. It was, in the end, quick, healthy and delicious – not such a compromise perhaps after all!