If you have eaten sushi with me, you know I like my wasabi. I generally will put enough wasabi on my sushi to make everybody around me cry. Believe it or not, there was a time when I did not eat wasabi by the spoonful.
Before the age of 17, I really couldn’t touch wasabi as I associated it with pain. (I reckon this is where most of you are currently. That little drop of wasabi you put in your soy sauce doesn’t count.) I have memories of tasting it along with raw fish and thinking it was like eating fire. Who wants to do that?
In college, however, I discovered wasabi with a vengeance with my discovery of sushi. Namely, sake (salmon) nigiri (still the gold standard of sushi). Once I got hooked I was hooked. In San Francisco I would eat out at my favorite sushi place twice a week for my fill. My rule still stands that all vendor lunches where I am treated to lunch are to be sushi as well as all of my own expensed lunches. So after my many years of wasabi-induced tear-shedding, I have compiled some important lessons that should be of benefit to you:
1. Wasabi is good for you.
Yes, and NOT as a decongestant, despite the fact that you start blowing your nose and crying. It actually has other health properties including:
1. Anti-Cancer and Anti-Oxidant
2. Antibiotic
3. Anti-Coagulant (including inhibition of platelet aggregation in the treatment of heart attacks)
4. Anti-Inflammatory Agent or for the treatment of asthma or anaphylaxis
5. Aids in Bone Calcification (from a different group of compounds)
6. Other Health Benefits
That “Other Health Benefits” section includes prevention of diahhrea. Yeah. Not sure if they mean the explosive kind, the pee-out-of-the-arse kind, or more of the chunky kind. Chunky Monkey style. Either way, it makes sense that sushi-eaters can use anything that helps prevent diahhrea.
2. Don’t make wasabi goo.
Yes, I used to do it. It’s so easy. You throw that gob of wasabi and mix it into mud and consume it like you just brushed chunky diahhrea on your sushi. It’s not how my ninjas, the Japanese, eat their sushi. If you are going to eat sushi, do it the right way. Take the wasabi, spread it on the sushi in its green form, and then you dip it in pure Japan-brewed soy sauce. Some good sushi places will actually have wasabi already on the sushi so you may not even need to put any on unless you’re masochistic or are trying to prevent explosive diahhrea.
3. Don’t breathe out when eating wasabi.
Not sure if I should be sharing this long-held secret, but if you breathe out after consuming a substantial quantity of wasabi, you may die. You will get that rush to your nose and head and then you will fall over. Don’t do it. Either don’t breathe or take a slow steady breathe inward. This is KEY to consuming wasabi like a Jap. It’s actually a secret, don’t give it away. Next time you get challenged to a wasabi eating contest, keep this in mind.
4. Serve wasabi in a small bowl and serve it as green tea ice cream to your mates
This is about as fun as wasabi gets. Your unsuspecting mate will take a big scoop, breathe out, start crying, start diahhrea’ing, then keel over and die. Life doesn’t get much fun than this.
Friday, February 15th, 2008
