The Best of Sushi

The two best Japanese sushi restaurants in America are not in New York or Beverly Hills. They are on Ventura Boulevard, in the San Fernando Valley.
A late-night TV writer I know flies out from NYC to Los Angeles specifically to get his sushi fix, because he knows what true foodies know; the second place in the world where seafood chefs get to pick from the day's best catch is Los Angeles (the first is Japan, of course). It follows, then, that the best sushi restaurants in the country are in Southern California. But while Matsuhisa and Nobu get the most buzz -- and, run by Nobu Matsuhisa, they are outstanding -- the TV writer follows others in the know right past Beverly Hills and Hollywood, and into the Valley.

at 16542 Ventura Blvd in Encino, looks unimposing, to say the least. Who would expect that one of the best Japanese restaurants in the country would be found in a slightly run-down strip mall, next to a Curves gym? Don't let the unglamorous setting deter you. Inside, you'll find intimate tables and a clean, no-nonsense sushi bar. I strongly recommend trying the toro and the crispy spicy tuna roll. If, like the aforementioned TV writer, you are a sushi aficionado, you will also consider them worth flying 3,000 miles for! Rather than Asian music, this slightly unconventional restaurant pipes in soft rock such as the Beatles and Paul Simon.
My other favorite Japanese restaurant, Kazu Sushi, is also in the Valley, at 11440 Ventura Blvd, Studio City. Unlike Katsu-ya, the interior is absolutely lovely, with a minimalist design, highly lacquered sushi bar and feng-shui placement of small Japanese statues. The tuna carpaccio and toro tartare are heaven. For the diner that doesn't consider spicy tuna rolls and California rolls a prerequisite of every sushi meal, try the omakase. It means, "chef's choice," and like the name implies, the chef will create many small dishes presented one at a time. A culinary surprise, every five minutes, is a both a treat and a luxury not to be missed

How to Make Tuna Salad

Tuna salad is a frugal meal item made either from a canned tuna or leftover grilled tuna. Knowing how to make the popular salad sandwich spread allows a hostess to offer tuna items on the buffet bar or serve them for family lunches or dinner.





Tuna salad isn't just a sandwich filling; it can be served with crackers or pita bread for a quick and easy appetizer, or top a plate of salad greens for a quick and healthy lunch.
If you find the basic tuna-and-mayo combo a bit bland, you can always try spicing it up with a a dollop of pesto, some chopped onion, olives, capers, or pickles. If you have them on hand, dried or fresh herbs, such as dill, basil, rosemary, fennel or tarragon can add some sophistication to a basic tuna salad. If more texture is what you're after, consider adding some crunch with diced apple or celery

Amid tuna mania, Japan needs to ask itself what food traditions are worth protecting. By: Takao Yamada

from - http://freshfromqatar.marvivablog.com/
Novelist and gourmand Shotaro Ikenami talks about tuna in “Baian kageboshi” (Baian, the Shadow) of his historical series, “Shikakenin Fujieda Baian” (Master Assasin, Fujieda Baian).
The protagonist, Baian, makes a visit to Izutsu, a high-class restaurant in Tokyo’s Asakusa district, for the first time in a while. There, he is served fish meat with white fat, which has been marinated in wasabi (Japanese horseradish) and soy sauce and grilled on a metal grate. Baian takes a bite and says something to the effect of “This is pretty good.”
The story takes place in the late Edo period, when tuna was rarely consumed. Even in the early Showa period, people only ate lean tuna meat, and fish mongers discarded the fatty parts because they spoiled quickly.
Ikenami continues to write about tuna for three pages, interspersing his childhood memories of the fish into the episode.
It was the recent brouhaha over tuna diplomacy and the “tuna as a part of Japanese culture” argument that reminded me of Baian.
As Ikenami wrote, the history of tuna consumption is young. In western Japan, where yellowtail is widely eaten, its history is even shorter. Modern refrigeration technology and transport made tuna available to the masses, but it only began appearing in supermarkets and at conveyor-belt sushi restaurants in the past decade or so.
Tuna is not a part of our traditional diet. Sure, it’s delicious, but the tendency to blindly worship fatty tuna is a meaningless consequence of a fishing industry that has grown increasingly capitalistic and a food culture that has become more and more uniform. Prior to Japan’s period of rapid economic growth, the Japanese ate whatever fish was available in nearby regional waters.
On Thursday, at an international conference held in Qatar, participants voted on a proposal to ban the international trade of Atlantic bluefin tuna (considered a high-quality tuna). It was rejected. The meeting had been attended by countries party to CITES, whose purpose is to protect wild animals in danger of extinction.
The Japanese delegation, comprised of bureaucrats from the Fisheries Agency and the Foreign Ministry, argued that there were too many bluefin tuna to position them in the same category as pandas, and that tuna fishing should be regulated by an international body dedicated to tuna conservation instead. The Japanese delegation worked to spread support for their position, in the process convincing Libya — which motioned for a vote to be taken sooner than had been expected — to reject the bill.
Most of the countries supporting the tuna ban were from the West, which championed the cause of environmental protection. However, the effects of prejudice toward the tradition of fish consumption and the political activities of radical environmental groups also cast a shadow on the debate. Some observers say that Japan did a good job of maneuvering its way through the game of international politics by bringing developing countries in Asia and Africa to their side.

But there is another way to look at it.
Democratic Party of Japan lawmaker Itsunori Onodera, a graduate of Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology, raised the bluefin tuna ban at a Lower House Foreign Affairs Committee meeting on Nov. 18 last year and sought a government response on the issue. He was the first in Japan to bring the issue up.
“If Japan had been in close contact with the EU and the U.S., the ban proposal could have been nipped in the bud,” he says. “More than anything, I’m worried about the government’s functional decline.”
Along with Japan, China and Australia also opposed the ban. China is now a consumer of high-quality tuna, and Australia is an exporter of high-quality tuna to Japan. Herein lies an arrangement that is deeply intertwined with Japan’s contemporary tuna mania, where money is no object.
In the first place, overfishing from roll-net fishing — which allows for massive quantities to be caught at a time — takes place because tuna exporters anticipate Japan to pay big bucks for it.
There is no doubt that the regulation of fishing methods, information gathering and polishing diplomatic strategies are essential. But we must not lose sight of something that is of greater importance. That is, to ask ourselves what food traditions are worth protecting, and to wake up from this gourmet tuna madness that has wreaked havoc around the world. Without such awareness, there is no way any tuna-protection measures are going to work.
Takao Yamada is an Expert Senior Writer at the Mainichi Daily News, Japan

Japan's food culture is an endangered species

from - japantoday.com
Japan's food culture is an endangered species

TOKYO —

Japan’s bursting supermarket shelves and myriad top-rated restaurants conceal a food crisis. The nation’s food self-sufficiency ratio is a dismal 40%. Its “food culture,” obnoxiously symbolized in the outside world by whales, dolphins and bluefin tuna, is an endangered species in its own right, incompatible with prevailing international norms and ecological realities. Not to mention a global population explosion that, together with rising standards of living in teeming emerging economies, places existing resources under heightened strain.
What to do? Simplify eating habits and compromise with prevailing norms, if only to avoid a potentially crippling isolation, counsels writer Kaoru Takamura in Shukan Post (April 9).
Takamura doesn’t claim expertise in either dietetics or ecology, but she sums up the evidence in plain sight. The dialogue, or shouting match, between Japan and much of the rest of the world on Japan’s “research” whaling, dolphin hunting and insatiable appetite for bluefin tuna regardless of rapidly depleting stocks, is “going nowhere,” says Takamura.
Concerning whales, the world simply isn’t buying Japan’s unyielding defense of its “food culture,” and if the annual whale hunt in frigid southern oceans is genuinely about research, “Japan had better produce some scientific research data that will convince the international community.” This, she says, it has so far failed to do.
The price it pays is to be tagged a “whale-killing country.” A century and a half ago—the era of Moby Dick—that might have been a compliment. Now, says Takamura, it’s “a discredit to the Japanese people.”  Whether the main issue for official Japan is protein or national pride, “is our need for whale meat really so great as to outweigh the international isolation” that acquiring it brings?
Tuna for Takamura epitomizes Japan’s irrational “gluttony”—also its dependence for nourishment on global, as opposed to domestic, resources. “Japan,” she says, “couldn’t last a day without imported food”—meat, fish, vegetables, even processed foods like miso and soy sauce are largely imported—“and yet we blithely
 stuff ourselves without giving this a thought.”



In 1970, she finds, Japan imported 26,000 tons of tuna; in 2002, 330,000 tons. Since then, regulations have brought the amount down to 200,000 tons. Even so, that’s 25% of all the tuna consumed in the world, and as for bluefin tuna, on which the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in Qatar last month failed to implement a proposed export ban, roughly 80 percent of what’s left of it ends up in the Japanese market.
“Looking to the future,” writes Takamura, “the issue that makes me most anxious is food.” In 1995 the world’s population was 5.7 billion; it’s 6.9 billion now and headed for 9.1 billion by 2050. Will Japan even be able to feed itself, let alone indulge in a devil-may-care “food culture”?

Frozen Food in Japan

This Frozen Food in Japan industry profile is an essential resource for top-level data and analysis covering the Frozen Food industry. It includes data on market size and segmentation, plus textual and graphical analysis of the key trends and competitive landscape, leading companies and demographic information.

Scope

* Contains an executive summary and data on value, volume and/or segmentation

* Provides textual analysis of Frozen Food in Japan's recent performance and future prospects

* Incorporates in-depth five forces competitive environment analysis and scorecards

* Includes a five-year forecast of Frozen Food in Japan

* The leading companies are profiled with supporting key financial metrics

* Supported by the key macroeconomic and demographic data affecting the market

Highlights

* Detailed information is included on market size, measured by both value and volume

* Five forces scorecards provide an accessible yet in depth view of the market's competitive landscape

* Market shares are covered by manufacturer and/or brand

* Also features market breakdown by distribution channel

Why you should buy this report

* Spot future trends and developments

* Inform your business decisions

* Add weight to presentations and marketing materials

* Save time carrying out entry-level research

Market Definition

The frozen food market consists of the retail sale of frozen bakery and desserts, frozen fish/seafood, frozen fruit and vegetables, frozen meat products, frozen potato products and frozen ready meals and pizza. The market is valued according to retail selling price (RSP) and includes any applicable taxes. Any currency conversions used in the creation of this report have been calculated using constant 2009 annual average exchange rates
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Mercury poisoning scare hits sushi tuna

New Yorkers were choking on their beloved sushi yesterday after reading that eating only six pieces of raw tuna a week could put them above government safety levels for mercury.
Laboratory tests performed by The New York Times found so much mercury in tuna sushi from 20 Manhattan shops and restaurants that a regular weekly diet of six pieces would exceed the maximum set by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Sushi from five of the twenty outlets had such high mercury levels that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) could take legal action to remove the fish from the market.
“No one should eat a meal of tuna with mercury levels like those found in the restaurant samples more than about once every three weeks,” Michael Gochfeld, Professor of Environmental and Occupational Medicine at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, New Jersey, told the newspaper.
Professor Gochfeld, who treats patients suffering from mercury poisoning, analysed sushi with Joanna Burger, a professor of life sciences at Rutgers University.
Tuna samples from the popular Manhattan restaurants Nobu Next Door, Sushi Seki, Sushi of Gari and Blue Ribbon Sushi and the grocery shop Gourmet Garage all had mercury above the “action level” of one part per million, at which the FDA can take food off the market.
“I'm startled by this,” Drew Nieporent, a managing partner of Nobu Next Door, told the newspaper. “Anything that might endanger any customer of ours, we'd be inclined to take off the menu immediately and get to the bottom of it.”
In 2004 the US Government warned women who might become pregnant, and children, to limit their consumption of canned tuna because the mercury it contained could damage developing nervous systems. Recent studies have suggested that high mercury levels can also cause health problems for adults, such as an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and neurological symptoms.
The Government did not issue a warning about fresh tuna. But the New York Times analysis found that most of its sushi samples contained much more mercury than did canned tuna.
Most of the sushi in the study was bluefin tuna, which generally has much more mercury than other species, such as yellowfin and albacore.
The Centre for Consumer Freedom, a food and restaurant industry group, said that the New York Times story was exaggerated, and asked the newspaper to retract it. It noted that the FDA's action level had a tenfold safety cushion, meaning that a consumer would have to ingest ten times as much before hitting a level associated with adverse effects. David Martosko, the research director of the centre, said: “Study after study shows that the documented health benefits of eating fish far outweigh any hypothetical risks.”
But the Environmental Defence advocacy group recommended that no one should eat bluefin tuna.
Professor Gochfeld said: “I like to think of tuna sushi as an occasional treat. A steady diet is certainly problematic. There are a lot of other sushi choices.”

from -/women.timesonline.co.uk

sushi tuna

If it is truly as bad as they say, the large fishing corporations will not want to blindly fish their way out of business. In the USA, some of the best conservationists are the hunters.
However I do not see anything wrong with reasonable restrictions on fishing, as long as there is adequate protection from illegal fishing. It does no good to tell the good guys to stop fishing so the bad ones can get the profit.

It also doesn't do any good to go overboard (no pun intended) to completely ban fishing for so long a period. Much of the US has way too many deer from hunting restrictions.
the fisherman will go out in competition to get as many fish as possible to earn as much money for their crew as possible. the companies will not fish their way out of business. it is the market who will eat their way out of business.
look at the ridiculousness of the 'sushi trend' in the states, and to a lesser extant the rest of the western world. A restaurant with even the slightest hint of asian cuisine now proudly boasts that they have a sushi bar. You can sushi at that chinese place, with your thai food, sushi and tacos, sushi at the grocery store, sushi at your college cafeteria, sushi at the 7-11. There is a huge demand for it and it's not going away. When the tuna is gone we'll move onto spicy bass rolls.
I loved the concerned conservationist who can't take the step to change their habits, myself included.
But even worse are the lovely folk who see multiple signs of the damage we cause to the planet and the ripples those have and toss their hands in the air saying "so now we're to blame for xyz? i thought it was abc? it's always something isn't it"
Yes it is always something. Everything action has a reaction. In the case of very interconnected ecosystems it's usually multiple reactions, and they're usually all bad.
We are witnessing the beginning of a complete collapse of life in the world's oceans. If you doubt this, please do a little research.
A complete ban on seafood is coming.
It will either be a voluntary short-term ban that will allow fish populations time to recover (and thus ensuring our children can eat fish) or the seafood ban will be involuntary as in "we've porked and polluted our way through the oceans and all the fish are gone forever and ever" kind of involuntary.
I hope I like eating jellyfish because that's pretty much all that'll be left when the fish are gone.
Oh, and the plastic. Jellyfish and floating plastic. Yum!

sushi tuna

sushi tuna

Tuna is the most basic Edo style sushi. It is one of the oldest ingredients used, and often regarded as the icon of sushi.

The tuna has a simple, but robust taste. It has almost no fat, and has a firm flesh. The blue fin tuna or honmaguro (true tuna), nicknamed the “black diamond” (for its shiny cobalt skin), is considered the best match for Edo style sushi, and is appreciated much more than the yellow fin or ahi tuna. The yellow fin lives in the warm currents and its flesh is bland, due to high water content, and soft compared to the blue fin which lives in the cold currents. The yellow fin tuna has little or no fatty section as well. This is a characteristic of fish that dwell in warm waters. The blue fin tuna has a firm flesh, the best tuna belly section, and has a deeper red color compared to the bright ruby tone of the yellow tail.

Tuna is best to eat it in its most simplest form. Wasabi, and soy sauce is the best match. No special touches are required. It is usually ordered after the lighter white fishes, and before the richer ingredients such as Spanish mackerel, tuna belly, sea urchin, and salmon roe. The old zuke method, where the sliced sashimi is soaked in soy sauce for a short period of time, is a popular choice. This was done in the old days to prevent the tuna from spoiling too quickly, but it concentrates the flavors in the tuna flesh due to water loss by osmosis. Tuna is also popular for the tekka maki (flaming steel roll), the most basic Edo Style roll.

from - sushiencyclopedia.com

sushi tuna

When most people hear the word, “Sushi”, they immediately think of raw fish.  In truth, dishes made with raw fish are called “Sashimi”.  What defines Sushi is any dish made with vinegar rice, which may or may not include raw fish.  Most often, Sushi will consist of various types of shellfish such as crab or lobster, or cooked fish along with other fresh ingredients wrapped tightly inside the sticky vinegar rice. 

Although in today’s society you will find Sushi served most often in a Japanese restaurant, it actually dates back to 7^th Century China.  As a way of preserving fish, the Chinese people started making Sushi but without modern day refrigerators, they used the natural process of fermentation.  To complete the Sushi-making process, only rice and salt were needed.  The result was delicious fish, causing Sushi to grow in popularity. 

In the 1800s, Sushi was made using a process that involved pressing fish in between layers of salt and leaving it for months to ferment.  This process is known as narezushi, or “edomaezushi”, which is still used in some restaurants in Japan.  The name narezushi was originally called “Edomae” and shortened to Edo.  This name translates to “in front of Edo” which is a reference to fish caught in front of Edo city and used for the making of Sushi.  Unlike the Sushi eaten today, Edo was formed in a ball of rice with a slice of the fish.  When it came time to eat narezushi, the rice ball was thrown out and only the fish eaten.  Today, narezushi is very difficult to find outside of Japan in that it has a unique taste not usually appreciated by Westerners. 

As time passed and many of the Japanese and Chinese cultures crossed, Sushi became a popular food choice in both countries.  Throughout the cities, you would find food stands where various types of Sushi were sold.  In fact, during intermission at the various theaters, Sushi was sold as a snack much like the popcorn sold in today’s theaters.  Since Sushi was easy and quick to make, it became a staple for most households in the 19^th Century to accommodate the busy lifestyles of the Japanese people. 

Eventually, a food shortage in Japan changed the way in which Sushi was made.  Rather than throw the rice out, it was now eaten along with the fish.  Additionally, the fermentation process was shortened so the fish although still safe to eat, was a little on the raw side.  Because the fermentation process was shortened, the Sushi had a slightly sour taste, which people loved.  As people began experimenting, they discovered that by making the rice with a little vinegar the same sour taste was produced and better yet, the fermentation time was dramatically reduced to one or two days. 

The popularity of Sushi is greater now than ever.  People are much more health conscious and enjoy the fact that Sushi is low fat, loaded with nutrients, and easy and quick to make.  For instance, a typical serving of Sushi consists of 8 to 10 pieces, which is around 350 to 400 calories.  Because of the fish, Sushi is high in protein and an excellent source for Omega 3 fatty acid.  From the seaweed used in Sushi along with the rice, this food is also rich in iodine and complex carbohydrates. 

What began as a means of preserving fish has turned into a multi-billion dollar industry with thousands upon thousands of Sushi restaurants dotting the country.  If you have never eaten Sushi, you will probably be surprised at how delicious it is.  Sushi has a nice, light taste that leaves you satisfied.

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