The battle of sushi fields

I had a small altercation with a piece of sushi yesterday. Middle of nowhere on a bike, somewhere between the Rhine and home, I get a call from A., who is back from a fabulous concert in Zürich and up for dinner. With a bit of effort I tracked down another friend who, plus her boyfriend, mine, his brother, my roommate, A., and the two friends she ended up bringing with, resulted in quite a crowd.

For a shared flat I have a big kitchen, enough for six to comfortably cook and eat. The nine of us had a bit of problem fitting everyone in, but sushi is work-intensive, and our particular economy had a comparative advantage in labor. So, knives flashing my faithful fellow cooks evicerated the vegetables, reduced the rice to a defenseless mass, and turned a tower of lettuce into a mustardly masterpiece. I myself went to battle against three bricks of spinach and a can of tomatoes, which, pitted against the pitiful three layers of lasagne noodles on hand resulted in something resembling a casserole but without aspirations of ever becoming a lasagne.

So, sushi. Cook rice, cool down rice, mince vegetables (carrots, radishes, cucumber, bamboo sprouts, baby corns, avacado), spread rice on nori (yes, it is seaweed), line up the vegetables neatly and carefully (the heretics added fish), and...roll. Someone pointed out the apparent affinity of my menues to tend towards "rolling". Freud would probably have something to say to that but I'd rather not speculate; suffice to say the evidence is against me (sushi, spring rolls, an attempt at soft tacos).

But I digress. We roll and we slice, we lift, we dip, we eat. For those brave of heart and tongue or devoid of taste buds, there is the evil green drug known as wasabi, cunningly addictive, leaving us red in the face, noses burning, coming back again and again for our next fix.


The opposing army...

Sometime later in the evening, after I had already eaten two or three hundred pieces of sushi and my ration of casserole and salad I went for another sushi piece, dunked it liberally in wasabi (I, ever the modest one, brag of my ability to eat it plain, with a spoon--not just idle chatter). And the bloody piece of sushi attacked me, getting stuck somewhere between chewing and swallowing; the wasabi, sensing weakness, moved in for the kill and in a brilliant flanking manoeuvre, managed to incapacitate me completely. I sat rigid in my chair, slowly turning red, gasping like a lifetime pack-a-day smoker mountain climbing, trying to swallow, or spit out, or do something, anything, but the persistant piece will not release its hold, going for the jugular like a bulldog. As my distress becomes obvious I am surrounded by a ring of horrified-looking dinner guests, probably looking like the unholy cross between a tomato and a fish out of water.

But I rallied the troops and counterattacked, managing to force the sushi into retreat and eventually into my stomach. The wasabi relinquished extremely unwillingly, and I was left with the last vestiges of the rearguard in my nose, giving me the appearance and the stuffy nose of a serious allergy sufferer with a headcol; these battle wounds would remain with me throughout the remainder of the evening.

My victory meal of apple sauce and crêpes was not the least diminished by my uncooperative olfactory organ, though I imagine I could have appreciated the taste as well as the consistancy had I been more astute or graceful in my initial sushi sortie.