#Sushi is Not Raw Fish:
Sashimi is just sliced raw fish, sometimes dipped in sauces and sometimes
served with sushi. Sushi is any food dish consisting of vinegared rice, usually
served with some other toppings, but not always. It happens to often be served
with various types of sea food, either cooked or raw, and perhaps even a mix of
the two; but that tradition simply comes from the primary food staples of the
locations where sushi originated (not Japan, by the way). Sushi can be served
with just about any toppings or none at all.
The variety of sushi served with raw sea food has given rise to the notion
that sushi is any dish served with raw fish. In fact though, sushi is more often
than not served in the western world with fully cooked sea food, including:
cooked imitation crab (California roll); smoked salmon (Seattle roll); grilled
squid or octopus; fully cooked shrimp; and fully cooked clam. It is also often
served with fried and battered sea food of varying types. There are also a
variety of vegetarian sushi dishes, including the very popular maki (cucumber
rolls).
Perhaps the reason sushi is so strongly thought of as “raw fish” in the
western world is that, whatever the toppings, it is commonly served cold. Also,
the general idea of raw fish isn’t exactly to the liking of most westerners
conceptually, so that form of sushi stood out more when it was first introduced;
giving rise to the notion that sushi was any dish that included raw fish.
The term sushi, literally means “it’s sour”, and comes from an ancient
grammatical form that is no longer used in other contexts. The “sour”
description comes from the ancient way of preparing sushi by fermentation of
meat, generally sea food, packed in rice with salt used as a preservative. The
vinegar produced from the fermenting rice ends up breaking down the fish meat
into amino acids. This, in turn, results in a strong umami flavor, which is one of the five basic tastes the human tongue can
detect.
