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- We're using those same classic old Tokyo sushi techniques.
Temperatures have to be absolutely perfect.
It's the key and one of the more difficult things.
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Hey how's it going?
Welcome to the Nimblefish.
We don't have a cool story
about how we came up with the name. (laughs)
We do a pretty classic Edomae-style sushi,
nigiri, sashimi, and temaki
is kind of the only thing we offer here.
Almost all the sushi is gonna be
classically found in Edo Bay,
but we basically take those techniques from those fish
and apply them to what we get from there
and what we get from here,
but most of it has to with a little bit of curing.
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I have to say I didn't really like
most hikarimono, or shiny fish,
things like mackerel, when I first started making sushi.
Now it's probably one of my favorite fish.
This is masaba, chub mackerel,
really fatty fish, also very traditional
like Edomae-style piece.
This is sanma, pike mackerel.
This one's coming from Hokkaido right now,
tends to be a little bit brinier and sweeter.
Really short season as well.
This one, is kohada, gizzard shad, very briny.
This one however, is gonna have a little bit
different preparation on the sujime.
It's gonna be a little bit heavier pickle.
Sujime is the process of curing through salt and vinegar.
Originally, all of the curing and preservation
of the fish was more or less created
because it was at a time when there wasn't refrigeration.
So these things had to last longer
outside at room temperature.
Basically what you're trying to do with the
salt is pull impure flavors out, pull water out of the fish,
concentrate fat content.
The vinegar process kind of helps to pull salt back out
and kind of seal up the fish from oxidization.
And vinegar and salt also have
a bunch of sanitary properties as well
which is part of the reason
why it's being used for the cure process.
The sanma has now began to sweat.
It hasn't really absorbed much salt,
but you can definitely see the moisture coming off of it.
All I'm gonna do is rinse it in vinegar
and then I'll pat it dry and put it
on the zaru and just let it air dry for a little bit.
Most of these mackerel-like fishes
tend to be a stronger flavored fish
and the sujime process mellows out the strongest
of the flavor of the fish and kind of highlights
the sweetness and fat content of the fish.
Now the salt's been rinsed off
and it's gonna get marinated in the vinegar portion
of the sujime for about thirty minutes.
We're using those same classic old Tokyo sushi techniques
in order to boost umami within the fish
and bring out the natural flavors that the fish already has
and take out some of the flavors that are less desirable.
Most of the preparations vary based on the fish,
but still the same ingredients,
just maybe different amounts or ratios and different timing.
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Tamago is probably the first piece of sushi I had as a kid.
I've always loved it.
I wanna say I try it everywhere I go,
so when I was able to make tamago,
that was a feat in itself.
I am half Japanese myself,
but I don't have a ton of Japanese culture in my family.
My original plan was to become an architect.
I was going to school for it.
When seeking out a job originally,
it seemed like something that I could connect to
a culture that I don't know very well.
It was a part-time job and I kinda fell in love with it
and eventually dropped out of school
and took it on full-time,
but I still do enjoy design and woodworking
and doing stuff with my hands
which definitely correlates to sushi a lot.
One of my first jobs ever as an apprentice
just kinda got thrown to the wolves
and first thing he had me do was make tamago.
I made more of a scrambled egg
and that's kind of (laughs) how that went for me.
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We've always done a folded omelet
so I really kinda geeked out on the recipe a little bit,
tried to push the envelop of how much dashi
I could get into that omelet with that
and still be able to make it
and I think we came up with a pretty good,
pretty good idea or recipe for it
and it's still one of my favorite pieces, actually,
to have at a sushi restaurant.
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For me, the most difficult part is like heat control.
The whole flipping thing is what most people
kind of focus on as being like the difficult part
or difficult technique of making tamago.
The tamago pan is not, it's a stainless steel pan
with copper on the outside.
It doesn't have any nonstick qualities to it
so it has to be well seasoned,
temperatures have to be absolutely perfect
in order for it to not stick.
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For the first few pours, there's gonna be
about three layers and then every continuous pour after that
is only two layers, so there's roughly 20 layers in there.
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Dungeness crab is a local variety of crab
native to the Northwest.
It goes as far South as maybe like Santa Barbara.
It's basically the crab that I grew up having,
living here in Oregon and my family was
avid scuba diving family, so we would go out
pretty much every weekend and have crab right on the beach.
It's got some sweetness to it.
It also has a tiny little bit of bitterness to it
and if you're getting it in the good time of the season,
it does have a lot of fat content as well
which lends to the sweetness.
We like to utilize all of it.
We'll take off the inedibles,
obviously the shell and the lungs
and a few other parts of that crab,
but for the most part, we save all the fat, all the innards.
The body meat's taken apart pretty intricately
as well as the claw meat and we incorporate the kani miso,
or the innards and the fat into the body meat.
The claw meat, we kind of serve separate 'cause it is
a better looking piece than the other one,
but it has these different qualities as far as
texture and flavor as well.
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This is buri, yellowtail.
What we're gonna do today is
get it ready for the aging process.
It's been cleaned.
The scales have been cut off.
Basically we're gonna salt it and let it sweat
and kind of like the sanma,
pull out any impure flavors or water,
things that are gonna help it
kind of go bad in the aging process.
We typically can take it roughly a week.
We've done it up to about 14 days.
What we're doing is creating more umami within the fish.
Also textural changes as well.
We do this kind of on a daily basis
until the fish decides it doesn't have
much more moisture to give
and so that's gonna concentrate the flavor of the fish.
Fat content's gonna be a little bit higher
than it was due to the loss of water weight as well.
Then just sits until it sweats and then we're gonna,
you know, once it releases a good amount of moisture,
typically, it will take about 15 to 20 minutes.
We'll rinse it, pat it really extra dry,
wrap it in paper and plastic
and then kind of repeat the process on a daily basis.
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There is a lot of fish that have decent livers,
but not at the size or fat content of monkfish.
Monkfish liver is almost like,
for the harvestable meat,
if you're including that as like about 75% of it.
For ankimo, I've definitely learned the more traditional way
which would be like to steam and torchon the ankimo.
The one that we're doing is gonna be
more of a slow braise or poach
and we do like a soy-based approach on that.
I did have like one of the best ones in my life
down in Los Angeles and tried to recreate it
and this is about as close as we can get.
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I learned from a lot of Japanese guys
and they're not gonna really tell you anything.
They're just like, "You have to figure it out for yourself.
You can watch and figure it out."
This is buri, yellowtail from Hokkaido.
Tairagai, pen shell clam from Ichi.
Ishidai, stone bream from Kagoshima.
Ito katsuo, skipjack tuna
coming from Kagoshima.
This is kinmedai, goldeneye snapper
coming from Chiba.
This is kani, dungeness crab coming from Washington.
Masaba, chub mackerel coming from Japan.
Toro, fatty bluefin tuna
from the collar coming from Nova Scotia.
Bafun uni from Hokkaido.
Akami zuke, a soy marinated tuna
coming from Nova Scotia.
Tamago, egg omelet.
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It's almost like you have to steal the ideas.
No one's gonna really tell you how to do it,
you just kind of have to watch and learn and figure it out.
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