I can recall that fateful day when a local orthodontist asked to reserve the entire space for a private party. I was excited, but I was also beside myself because the request was for a sushi party. I nodded with enthusiasm as I recorded requests for items like miso soup, seaweed salad, spicy tuna, crunchy shrimp, and all manner of exotic things I had never heard of, much less attempted to create. I wanted to cry. Yet I stayed cool on the outside under the weight of fear and the stares of disbelief from my employees.
As soon as the session was over, I flipped out. I had promised to create an experience built around something I had never once seen or tasted in person. I had no way to run out to my local sushi bar and have a sushi experience, because there wasn’t one in town. The nearest place was several hours away, and I didn’t have the time to make the journey. For the first time, I wondered if I had bitten off way more than I could chew.
Armed with my library card, I ventured down the street to the public library and checked out as many books on Japan and Japanese cuisine as I was allowed. Much to my dismay, there were very few sources that spent significant time on the subject of sushi. (Blogs and informative web-sites were not a thing just yet.) What little information I did find I studied intensively. I became a little more comfortable with the idea.
The next hurdle was trying to locate the exotic ingredients. My local Asian market had some of the basics—rice, soy sauce and rice vinegar. But where was I supposed to get sushi-grade tuna, katsuobushi (smoked fish used to make basic Japanese soup stock), or shichimi togarashi (Japanese seven-flavored pepper blend)? The necessary equipment was also a problem. Even if I could find them, could I justify to my business partners (aka Mom and Dad) the need for carbon-steel knives, a hangiri (the flat-bottomed bowl with straight sides made of cypress used only for marinating sushi rice), a shamoji (the wooden paddle used only for tossing steamed sushi rice with the dressing), and a large rice cooker just for this one party? I knew better than to even ask.
Tofu and Avocado Caterpillar Rolls (page 97)
The author enjoying sushi with friends
I had to improvise with my ingredients as well as with the tools I needed to make the sushi. My staff and I spent an incredible amount of energy perfecting a cold smoker for salmon and figuring out how many bricks and cans were needed to weigh down the lid of a pot to cook rice on the stove. When we couldn’t source suggested ingredients like pickled eggplant, we used what we felt were suitable substitutions—like the local staple, pickled okra.
Somehow we made it work. The party was a success. And that should have been enough. But when people found out that the Chocolate Giraffe served sushi (just that once), the requests for more kept coming in. Naturally, I promised we would start having sushi nights once a month. That turned into once every two weeks, then once a week, and then finally a small portion of the regular restaurant menu was dedicated to sushi. We were the talk of the town!
I couldn’t believe how much people loved our sushi. One day, I received a long-distance call with reservations for twelve! The man on the phone sounded so excited to bring his out-of-town colleagues to Starkville, more than an hour’s drive, for a sushi experience. We prepared and waited anxiously for them to arrive. But the moment the businessman from one of Mississippi’s car manufacturing plants arrived with his eleven male colleagues from Japan, I went to the restroom, locked myself in, and cried. I knew my sushi was far from authentic, and I finally decided that I was no longer an invincible “sushi chef” who would remain beloved and sheltered in my small Mississippi hometown. My staff knocked on the door and tried to lure me out. They threatened to call my parents. I eventually emerged to face the situation that I had wholeheartedly gotten myself into. And somehow, we made it work. The guests were delighted by the idea of creative American-style sushi. On that night, I decided I wanted to stand in front of customers with confidence and knowledge about sushi.
I searched high and low for a way to gain that knowledge. Just outside of Los Angeles, there was a place that seemed to offer exactly what I was looking for—the California Sushi Academy. Finally, I had the answer. Imagine my surprise when my family and friends asked if I was going crazy. Who ever heard of a black female sushi chef?! Couldn’t I just be content to continue making sushi in Starkville? I closed the businesses, settled my accounts, and decided to do it anyway.
Pomegranate and Basil Rolls (page 77)
Making sushi with friends is a great way to catch up while preparing a delicious meal
Mushroom “Spider” Rolls (page 90)
With every last bit of spunk and chutzpah I had remaining, I boarded a Greyhound bus with a one-way ticket to LA and less than $300 in my pocket. I was practically broke, mostly homeless, and always hungry. But sushi school did not disappoint. It was a magical time of learning and work that I would repeat with no regrets. I soaked up every bit of information available to me. I placed my cutting board as close to the sensei as possible every day. I studied, practiced, and went well beyond my required intern hours before the session was halfway done. And when I finished school, I decided that LA was not the place for a broke, homesick Mississippi girl. I moved to Memphis, Tennessee and began my professional sushi career as the chef of a small local sushi bar.
One of the things I realized while working there was that people wanted to take sushi into their own hands. But it was elusive, and sushi classes often made them feel more intimidated. There were sushi secrets that they wanted to know but couldn’t find. I often thought back to the days when I was trying to learn to make sushi. Why weren’t there simple methods? Why couldn’t people experiment? And why did sources insist that would-be home chefs buy expensive equipment that they most likely would never use? Necessity had truly been the mother of invention with most of my early sushi recipes and methods. I began a blog and series of workshops to help people create sushi in their home kitchens. And in 2012, Sushi Secrets: Easy Recipes for the Home Cook was released.
Why vegetarian sushi?
As soon as I submitted Sushi Secrets, I knew that its follow-up had to be a book that focused strictly on vegetarian sushi. One of the biggest things that appealed to me when writing Vegetarian Sushi Secrets was that it took a few leaps in the direction of debunking that all-too-familiar myth that sushi must contain raw fish.
What can I say? I suppose I like a challenge…or two. When I shared my intentions, well-meaning family and friends voiced a common concern: “How will you ever come up with enough vegetarian recipes to fill a sushi book?” Yet I found just the opposite problem. Unlike our diminishing access to thinly stretched seafood species, fresh vegetables and fruits are highly accessible. Many communities have a corner specialty grocer or a neighborhood farmers’ market. Backyard-gardening enthusiasts are sprouting up everywhere and cultivating that primal urge to dig in and get their hands a little dirty before dinner. With so many options available, it was quite a challenge to look each edible plant family in the eye, so to speak, and deem only some of them sushi-worthy, at least for the purposes of this book.