Garlic and Sapphires

by Ruth Reichl

  Here was a challenge I could not resist. That night, as I stood in the kitchen making Thai noodles, I thought that if I could just get this recalcitrant old lady to eat sushi, I could probably get anyone to eat it.

  Sort-of-Thai Noodles

  ½ pound very thin rice noodles (I prefer Thai rice sticks,

  but Dynasty brand noodles found in supermarkets are

  perfectly acceptable)

  ¼ cup sugar

  ¼ cup Asian fish sauce (Vietnamese nuoc mam or

  Thai naam pla)

  ¼ cup white vinegar or unseasoned rice vinegar

  2 tablespoons peanut oil

  ½ pound medium shrimp, shelled

  2 cloves garlic, minced

  ½ pound ground pork

  4 scallions, sliced into ½-inch lengths (including about half

  of the green part)

  2 eggs

  1 teaspoon dried, crushed red pepper flakes

  ¼ cup fresh lime juice (about 2 limes)

  ½ cup salted peanuts, ground or chopped fine

  1 lime, cut into 6 wedges

  Sriracha chili sauce

  Soak the noodles in hot water to cover for about 20 minutes, until soft; then drain and set aside.

  Mix the sugar, fish sauce, and vinegar together and set aside.

  Heat the oil in a wok or skillet until it is very hot, and sauté the shrimp just until they change color, about 1 minute. Remove them from the wok and set aside.

  Add the garlic to the wok, and as soon as it starts to color and get fragrant, add the pork and half of the scallions. Sauté just until the pork loses its redness; then add the drained noodles and mix quickly. Add the reserved fish sauce mixture, reduce the heat to medium, and cook until the noodles have absorbed all the liquid, about 5-8 minutes.

  Move the noodles aside and break 1 egg into the wok, breaking the yolk. Tilt the wok so you get as thin a sheet of egg as possible, and scramble just until set. Then mix the egg into the noodles. Do the same with the remaining egg.

  Add the shrimp, remaining scallions, and red pepper flakes and mix thoroughly. Add the lime juice and cook, stirring for another minute.

  Transfer the noodles to a platter, and top with a sprinkling of peanuts. Serve the lime wedges, remaining peanuts, and chili sauce alongside.

  Serves 4

  I spent the better part of a year looking for the perfect sushi bar, the one that would persuade Claudia to try raw fish. Then, in the spring of 1995, it found me.

  It was one of those days when the sky looks as if it has been washed clean and the air is so pure it pulls you along, forcing you to stay outside. I walked across Central Park, past all the delirious children on the carousel, exited at Fifth Avenue, and continued downtown. Just as I passed Bergdorf Goodman, the door opened to disgorge a stylish Japanese fashion plate. From her Manolo Blahnik shoes to her Hermès scarf, she was dressed entirely in designer clothing. As she tripped elegantly along I found myself following her, and when she turned west on Fifty-fifth Street, some impulse made me turn with her. Her destination, it turned out, was a modest restaurant I had never noticed halfway down the block.

  I blinked when I walked in; it was quite dark, and quite empty. When my vision cleared I saw two Japanese men at one end of the sushi bar, and a bearded American wearing Birkenstocks in the middle. Vacant seats stretched between them.

  The sushi chef was an older man, and when he looked up and saw the fashion plate, his lined round face was illuminated with fierce joy. He bowed very deeply and intoned, “Hajimemashite.”

  The woman bowed back, but much less deeply. “Genki-Desu,” she said, tucking herself into a seat directly in front of the chef and carefully arranging her legs.

  An older woman in a kimono appeared from behind a curtain and bowed to the new customer. Then she noticed me standing in the doorway, and said discouragingly, “Only sushi.”

  “That will be fine,” I replied.

  “No tempura. No noodles. Only sushi,” she reiterated in a voice that held no invitation.

  “Only sushi,” I agreed. “Fine.” She led me to the far end of the bar, the one that was not occupied. “Only sushi,” she said again, warningly.

  “May I have tea?” I asked, giving a sidelong glance to the chic woman, who was now engaged in what seemed like polite Japanese chitchat with the old man.

  He had laid a long bamboo leaf in front of her and was grating a pale green wasabi root against a traditional sharkskin grater. Seeing this, I suddenly understood that this was going to be an expensive meal; ordinary sushi bars do not use fresh wasabi.

  It took me a while to convince the waitress that I wanted whatever the chic woman was having. It took me even longer to persuade her that I could afford it. “Very expensive,” she said, shaking her head. I said that would be fine. She shook her head and went down the counter to convey my wishes to the chef, who turned to give me a long appraising stare.

  He ambled down the bar toward me, smiled, and stared frankly into my face. Then he asked, “You have eaten sushi before?”

  I told him that I had, and struggled to say something that would reassure him. I knew that he was worried that when the bill came I would not be able to pay it, that he was embarrassed to tell me that when he said “expensive” he meant that my lunch was likely to cost more than a hundred dollars. What could I say to him? I tried this: “I have spent time in Japan.”

  This did not seem to reassure him. I tried again. I bowed and said, “Omakase, I am in your hands.”

  A broad smile moved across his face. I had found the code. He spread the bamboo leaf in front of me and, leaning forward, said softly, “Sashimi first?”

  “Of course,” I said, and he began grating the wasabi. Patting it into a pale green pyramid, he placed it precisely on the leaf, added pickled ginger, and retreated to the center of the counter to survey his fish.

  From a drawer beneath the counter he extracted a wrapped rectangle and began peeling off the plastic to reveal a pale pink slab of tuna belly. As his knife moved unerringly through the flesh, the waitress glided up to me. “Notice,” she said, “that Mr. Uezu does not cut toro as other chefs do. He cuts only with the grain of the fish, never across it.” I scrutinized the squares of fish the chef placed on the leaf. They were the pale pink of pencil erasers, with no telltale traces of white sinew snaking through them. When I put the first slice on my tongue it was light, with the texture of whipped cream. It was in my mouth—and then it had simply vanished, faded away leaving nothing but the sweet richness of the fish behind. “Oooh,” I found myself moaning, and the waitress allowed herself a tight little smile.

  The chic woman said something to the sushi chef, and he grinned and said “Hai,” as he bent to take something from the glass case before him. It was a small silvery fish, only a few inches long, that I had never seen before. He filleted it quickly, pulled the shining skin back in one quick zipping motion, and chopped the fish into little slivers that he scooped into two hollowed-out lemons. He placed one lemon before her, along with a little dish of chopped ginger and scallions, and then he came to my end of the bar and did the same.

  “Sayori,” he said.

  “No wasabi,” said a voice in my ear. The waitress had glided up so silently that I had not heard her. She pointed to the soy sauce. “Sayori is very delicate and Mr. Uezu does not want you to eat wasabi with this fish.”

  I picked up a cool sliver, dipped it into the ginger mixture, and placed it in my mouth. It was smooth and slick against my tongue, with a clear, transparent flavor and the taut crispness of a tart green apple.

  “Oh,” I murmured in surprise, and again the waitress gave a tight little smile.

  “You have not had this before,” she said. “Mr. Uezu has secret ways of obtaining fish that no one else can get.” I had a fleeting vision of the small, sweet-faced man rampaging through the Fulton Fish Market with a snub-nosed pistol.

  “No,” I agreed, “I have not had this before.” As I said it a look of ho
rror, quickly replaced by a less potent look of mere disapproval, flashed across her face. Following her glance I saw the man in Birkenstocks plunk his sushi rice-side-down into the soy sauce, and as he put it in his mouth we could both see that the rice had turned a deep brown. The waitress made a quick, sharp intake of breath and turned away.

  Mr. Uezu was in front of the fashion plate now, prying a tiny abalone out of its thick shell and slicing it so thinly you could practically see light through the slices. He was creating a little still life, his knife slashing through the long neck of a geoduck clam until he had created little stars snuggling next to the abalone. Now he laid a bright red Japanese Aogi clam beside it, and next to that two tiny octopuses the size of marbles. Finally an assistant handed him a pair of minuscule crabs, no larger than my thumbnail, on a little square of white paper; he placed them on the plate. The woman became more animated, smiling and bowing in a way that let me know that something he had given her was really out of the ordinary. I wondered if he would deign to repeat the still life for me.

  He did. The abalone was like no creature I’ve ever eaten, hard and smooth, more like some exotic mushroom than something from the ocean, with a slightly musky flavor that made me think of ferns. Beside it the geoduck was pure ocean—crisp and briny and incredibly clean—so that what I thought of was the deep turquoise waters of the Caribbean. Next to the pure austerity of these two, the Japanese clam seemed lush and almost baroque in its sensuality.

  Mr. Uezu pointed to the miniature crabs. “Sawagani,” he said. “One bite, one bite. Whole thing.”

  I picked up one of the crabs with the tips of my chopsticks. They had been deep-fried, and they crunched and crackled in my mouth like some extraordinary popcorn of the sea. When the noise stopped, my mouth was filled with the faint sweet richness of crabmeat, lingering like some fabulously sensual echo.

  “More?” asked Mr. Uezu. And I suddenly realized that no matter what the beautiful woman might be eating, I did not want more, that I wanted to keep these tastes in my mouth, to savor them as the day wore on. And so I shook my head no, I was finished. “One handroll?” he asked. How could I resist?

  He filled a crisp sheet of nori with warm rice and spread it with ume boshi, the plum paste that is actually made from wild apricots. Then he covered that with little sticks of yama imo, the odd, sticky vegetable the Japanese call “mountain yam.” It tastes as if a potato had been crossed with Cream of Wheat—changing, in an instant, from crisp to gooey in your mouth. The chef added a julienne of shiso leaf, wrapped it all up, and handed it across the counter.

  It was an extraordinary sensation, the brittle snap of the seaweed wrapper giving way to the easy warmth of the rice and then the crunch of the yama imo, which almost instantly turned into something smooth and sexy. Meanwhile the flavors were doing somersaults in my mouth: the salt of the plum, the sharp of the vinegar, and the feral flavor of the herb.

  “Umami,” the waitress whispered in my ear. Again she had glided silently up.

  “Excuse me?” I asked.

  “Umami,” she said again. “It is the Japanese taste that cannot be described. It is when something is exactly right for the moment. Mr. Uezu,” she continued proudly, “knows umami.”

  Paying the bill, I held the tastes in my mouth, along with the knowledge that this was, absolutely, the place to bring Claudia.

  RESTAURANTS

  by Ruth Reichl

  “SUSHI?” SAID A DUBIOUS VOICE on the other end of the line. “Must we? I’ve never tried it.”

  That is not the answer I’d been hoping for; introducing your friends to sushi is an awesome responsibility. But when trendy restaurants like Match, T and Judson Grill start serving sushi and others like Blue Ribbon sprout actual sushi bars, it is time to take a look at tradition. Which brings me to Kurumazushi, one of New York City’s most venerable sushi bars.

  “But,” my friend’s voice dropped to a whisper, “what if I don’t like it? Can I eat something else?”

  This, I had to admit, was a problem. Kurumazushi, like the classic Japanese restaurant it is, serves only sushi and sashimi. There are no noodles, no teriyaki, no tempura. I hedged a bit. “The fish is so fine,” I heard myself saying, “that any person who likes to eat as much as you do ought to appreciate it.” I could feel her wavering.

  “It’s very expensive,” I urged. “It might cost $100 a person, and I’m paying.”

  That did it.

  Still, when I arrived at the restaurant she was standing in the deserted bar looking crestfallen. “It doesn’t look particularly fancy,” she whispered loudly, disappointment dripping from her voice. She stared accusingly at the plain wooden counter and the glass case filled with fish. Just then all the men behind the bar let out a boisterous chorus. “Hello!” they boomed in unison. My friend jumped. “Hello!” a waitress in a long Japanese robe echoed more softly. “Would you like to sit at the sushi bar?” She led us to seats in front of the proprietor, who gave us a gentle smile.

  Toshihiro Uezu arrived in New York City in 1972 to work at Saito. Five years later, he opened his own restaurant, developing a loyal following long before the current craze for sushi. At night he serves a mostly Japanese clientele, but during the day most of the seats at the sushi bar are occupied by Americans. Nobody knows better than Mr. Uezu how to introduce people to the pleasures of sushi.

  “The toro is very fine tonight,” he began.

  “Omakase,” I said, “we are in your hands.” And then I added that my friend had never tasted sushi.

  He smiled broadly as if this were a pleasure and turned to say something in Japanese. The man beside us swiveled in his seat, looked at my friend and said, “You are very lucky.”

  And so she was. “First,” Mr. Uezu asked, “sashimi?”

  The answer to this was yes; serious sushi eaters always start with sashimi. Mr. Uezu set a pair of boards in front of us, heaped them with shiny, frilly green and purple bits of seaweed and began slicing fish. Next to him an underling was scraping a long, pale green root across a flat metal grater.

  “What’s he doing?” my friend asked.

  “Grating fresh wasabi,” I replied. “Very few places use fresh wasabi, but the flavor is much subtler and more delicate than the usual powdered sort.” The man scooped up little green hillocks and set one on each board. Beside them Mr. Uezu placed pale pink rectangles of toro.

  I showed my friend how to mix the hot wasabi with soy sauce and dip the edge of her fish into the mixture. She picked up a slice of the fatty tuna and put it in her mouth. She gasped. “I never imagined that a piece of fish could taste like this,” she said. “It is so soft and luxurious.” She liked the rich, cream-colored yellowtail almost as well. Then Mr. Uezu put slices of fluke on our boards; we dipped them into a citrus-scented ponzu sauce, admiring the clean, lean flavor of the fish.

  “Spanish mackerel,” said Mr. Uezu, holding up silver-edged slices of fish as the waitress set down dishes of ginger-scented sauce. The mackerel had an amazingly sumptuous texture, almost like whipped cream in the mouth. “It just dissolves when I take a bite,” my friend said, amazed.

  “Now sushi?” Mr. Uezu asked.

  “Yes,” my friend said. “Yes, yes.” She was clearly hooked.

  “One piece each?” Mr. Uezu asked. “In Japan we always serve sushi in pairs, but I like to serve sushi one piece at a time so you can taste more.” His hands hovered over the fish in the case, selecting Japanese red snapper, crisp giant clam, small sweet scallops. “Can I use my fingers?” whispered my friend.

  “Yes,” I said. “But be sure to dip each piece into the soy sauce fish side first; it would be an insult to saturate the rice with soy and ruin the balance of flavors.”

  Raw shrimp as soft as strawberries was followed by marinated herring roe, which popped eerily beneath our teeth. Gently smoked salmon gleamed like coral. Then Mr. Uezu pillowed some sea urchin on pads of rice.

  “It looks like scrambled eggs,” my friend said. She took a bite
. “I think,” she said finally, groping for words, “that this is the sexiest thing I’ve ever eaten. Let’s stop now.”

  “You must have a little green tea ice cream with red bean sauce for dessert,” the waitress behind us said. “Mr. Uezu makes it himself. He makes everything.”

  Of course, we had to have that. It was barely sweet but very appealing. My friend looked down at the Christmas-colored dessert and said, “Who would have thought I’d find myself liking raw fish and bean sundaes?”

  And then she was struck by an awful thought. “It’s not always this good, is it?” she asked accusingly.

  I had to admit that it is not. There is nothing flashy about Mr. Uezu, and his restaurant has a deceptive simplicity. But after eating at Kurumazushi it is very hard to go back to ordinary fish.

  KURUMAZUSHI

  Miriam

  My mother’s blue silk dress fell over my shoulders and settled against my hips with eerie perfection. Smoothing the skirt, I reached up to clasp her pearls around my neck. As they clicked into place I could feel them nestle into my skin and begin to gently warm themselves. I wrapped myself in a robe and sat down to let Denise work her magic, keeping a wary eye on Claudia, who was slumped alarmingly into her seat.

  “Are you all right?” I asked when Denise’s work was nearly done. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “I have,” said Claudia, going even paler. “I suggested this, but I was not expecting the transformation to be quite so dramatic. With the dress, the jewelry . . .” Her voice grew faint and she gestured helplessly toward the mirror.

  I had found the dress in the back of my mother’s closet after she died, hanging between the fake Pucci shifts and the jackets from Loehmann’s; the scent of Joy still clung faintly to the fabric. It was beautifully cut, with a straight skirt and high neckline, and Mom had worn it for years. As I sorted piles for Goodwill, heaping up the bold prints and bright colors that my mother favored, I found myself putting the blue dress aside, along with the pearls that had belonged to my grandmother.