Global, Homemade, and (Mostly) Raw

About author / Amy Powell

World traveler; gourmet 30 minute meals; lover of exotic ingredients; winner on FoodTV's Chefs vs City; graduate French Culinary Institute. Her recipes will tantalize your taste buds.

When my brother and I were still young enough to need booster seats at the dinner table, on rare occasions our parents would take us out to eat at a local Japanese restaurant. This was a time before sushi was available in every supermarket refrigerator case and 7-Eleven. And our town was far from cosmopolitan; it was small, remote and populated with retirees. Japanese food was very exotic in a place like our hometown.

While Paul and I painstakingly sucked each bean out of the edamame pod, we looked on in fascination as our parents partook of more exotic fare like raw fish, tempura, and dark looking spaghetti I would later learn is the buckwheat noodle soba.

The restaurant moved away before we could graduate from shoving food in our face by hand to wielding chopsticks. But the allure of the restaurant with its green beans in pods and strange grownup food, like uncooked fish, never faded.

Today, even as Japanese restaurants serving edamame and raw fish can be found in nearly every corner of the country, the world of sushi is still largely a mystery for many people. We may buy California rolls and tuna sashimi from Whole Foods as a take out lunch, but very few people would go as far to make sushi themselves. And yet as the love of sushi has taken the country by storm, the demand for more and different ways of eating raw fish has increased just as rapidly.

Possibly no one man has done more to expand how we Americans expect to eat our raw fish than Nobuyuki Matsuhisa, or as most people call him, Nobu. Born in Japan and trained there as a young man in the art of sushi, Nobu went on to work in Argentina, Peru, Alaska, then back to Japan before settling in Los Angeles to open his first US restaurant. These world travels made an indelible impression on his style, as he would go on to rock the world of traditional raw and cooked fish creating iconic dishes like black cod marinated in miso and yellowtail sashimi with jalapenos. These dishes would become so popular and well known that imitators abound as far off as little desert towns in California.

Having long ago graduated from edamame to sushi, I too wanted to be a Nobu imitator on a recent Saturday afternoon. I was craving that thrill of a slightly challenging foreign food with the creativity of global influence à la Nobu. Fortunately I have access to sushi quality yellowtail, something not everyone can get today even in big cities.

However, now with the ability to order food through reliable vendors online, anyone in any small town who has a craving for homemade raw fish can get sushi grade selections with the click of a button online (Honolulu Fish Company is a reliable vendor, I would also look for sales through Gilt Taste).

I could have eaten my yellowtail as is but instead I went for a slight sear on either side to give the fish some texture. Off the pan, I sliced across the grain and arranged the fish on a plate in neat overlapping squares. A Vietnamese inspired sauce of chilies, vinegar, soy, sugar, lemon, and fish sauce was spooned over the rows of fish. Delicate leaves of cilantro as garnish finished the plate. The first bite was rich and buttery from the fish, sweet, tangy, and a bit fiery from the chili sauce. I was a long way from edamame but the sense of discovery was as if I was three again, sucking the beans out of my first green pods.

Serves/Makes: 2

• 2 Thai chilies
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 lemon
• 1 tablespoon fish sauce
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon rice vinegar
• 12 ounces sushi grade yellowtail (hamachi)
• salt and black pepper
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• cilantro leaves