Column

It never ceases to amaze me as to how rapidly we are developing a food culture and sensibility which is global. This may be more apparent in Delhi than in Mumbai because of several factors such as the strong bias towards vegetarianism from the moneyed people who dine out in Mumbai as well as the cost of real estate.But we do produce some fine young chefs and this was in evidence at a sushi contest which I judged last week at the Dadar Catering College under the watchful eye of my friend Chef Vernon Coelho.

This event was promoted by the highly entrepreneurial Harry Cheng of Maido.Harry is a person of Chinese origin who became a naturalised Japanese citizen, got a degree at Oxford, decided to come to India two years ago to introduce Japanese food products and Saki into the Indian market.He was helped by the fact that when he arrived there were several Japanese restaurant around, including the iconic Wasabi at the Taj and the less distinguished Tetsuma in Colaba.But Harry is keen to promote Japanese products as he imports them and at the sushi tasting there were representatives from the Kikoman, the Japanese soya sauce manufacturer and from the Japanese Consulate.

There were two contests, one which was between the students and the other between the professionals, including a sushi chef from the JW Marriott, the Four Seasons and Pan Asia.It was interesting watching the Japanese eat their sushi. They ate the sushi in one gulp.I am told it is almost a mystical and Zen-like experience to close your eyes, feel the warm rice fall away and then taste the essence of the experience which is the fish. The Japanese strongly disapprove of the habit, which I must confess I share, of eating sushi in two bites as this would mean that you are not concentrating on tasting the essence of the sushi,you are more concerned about not messing up the table.

The quality of the sushi produced by our young chefs was exceptional given the fact that they had only five days of training and that this is an extraordinarily difficult culinary exercise. The categories included presentation, innovation, variety and taste. I am told that the finest sushi chefs in Japan are so accomplished that when they mould their sushi the number of grains of rice in each piece never varies by more than three or four!

It was also heartening to see that one of the best students was a woman. In Japan this would be considered sacrilege as sushi making was, and continues to be a male preserve deriving perhaps from the need to wield the yananagi, the tapered blade of the knife, not dissimilar to those wielded by the samurai.The reason offered is that a woman wears perfume and lotions and that could transfer onto the fish, the other excuse for this was that women have slightly higher body temperatures and the cooking process would start in their hands.

There was an attempt on the part of the Indian students to introduce local spices like turmeric into sushi which is understandable as it is the kind of food which lends itself to innovation.For example, the highly popular California Roll is not something which the Japanese recognise as proper sushi, but was something developed in California by Japanese chefs there.