Wasabi

A good friend of mine went to a charity function and bid on/won a "prize" that is a catered 5 course dinner, wherein the guests (including moi!!) will be picked up by limosine service.

Part of the prize was to go to the food distributor providing the meal and spend 2 hours in the kitchen with their chefs. It was awesome. The time just flew by.

(We also toured the warehouse. In brief, it was a big cold room with boxes of pantry goods. Then there was another, colder room with the meat and dairy products and THEN there was the gigantic freezer warehouse which:
a) Was enormous, no REALLY, and
b) so frigid I coudn't get out of it quickly enough, and
c) costs $30K a month to keep icy cold.

Every time we turned around someone was zipping by us on a forklift. My friend and I wanted to race on the smaller forklift vehicles but they wouldn't let us. Dammit.)

Back to the kitchen part -

The first thing we did is roll sushi. The chefs (who all addressed each other constantly as Chef, for example "Chef do you have any salt and pepper over there?") had all of the ingredients prepared and arranged and it was very colorful and mouthwatering.

(Yes, we got to help with it all and try everything we made, and it was fabulous.)

We had king crab legs, roasted red peppers, portobello mushrooms, cucumber, avocado, mango, carrot strips, etc...all sorts of fillers and we each used something different. By the way, don't mix up Japanese and Chinese soy sauce because they are very different.

The rice brand was KoKuHo, and do with that name what you will. If you make your own sushi, which we found out is not very hard to do, be sure to RINSE the rice over and over (before you cook it) in a mesh colander until the water runs clear. When you start spreading the rice on your nori (seaweed paper, more or less) you want to have your fingers very wet so that the rice doesn't stick to them.

Forget the bamboo mat. Wet down your countertop slightly and lay a piece of plastic wrap on it. The plastic wrap will more or less stay in place and this helps you to roll tightly. You put your nori on it (seaweed paper, which my friend unfortunately could not bring herself to try), and cover about 3/4 of it with an even layer of rice, and then starting a little in from the edge you lay your other foods. (Not too much or it squeezes out the ends when you roll it, like Cynthia's did and we laughed hysterically at her)

The saran wrap is, in the opinion of Tony(aka Chef 1), much better than the bamboo mats because NOTHING STICKS to it. Listen, if I can get it right on the first try, it's not hard. The important thing is to press the roll together as tightly as you can while you roll it and not get the saran wrap inside the roll. Just keep lifting the saran wrap away from the edge you're rolling into. (Bonus, they're all wrapped and you can put them in the fridge until your party - you can leave the saran wrap on when you slice it, the wrap will slip right off the slices easily. )

We made one round, and then he did a reverse roll (rice on the outside, again easy because it doesn't stick to the saran wrap) and pressed it into a teardrop shape and rolled it in black sesame seeds. Gorgeous! When you slice that you can arrange the pieces to look like flower petals.

Now... trying new foods... I am not big on raw seafood but I will try it all if it's cooked, along with almost anything else. My friend wouldn't eat the rolls because she didn't want to try the seaweed (nori) and blah blah... My philosophy is TRY IT. You just never know. In the course of the day I tasted the following for the first time:

• caviar (it was dyed black with squid ink) - we put some on top of the sushi rolls - not much flavor but cool the way it pops in your mouth - there were 3 bowls of it for us (one wasabi, one was red but I didn't catch why)
• wasabi - holy crap it's hot....no more for me thanks but at least I gave it a whirl
• pickled ginger - awesome

Next we had another chef talk to us about reducing sauce and then he made mayonaise (the real way by mixing eggs and vinegar and oil ) flavored with mustard, garlic, and herbs

The next part was fruit carvings. This guy can seriously carve anything out of fruit and veggies.... check this out...the parrot pineapple, the pepper frog, it was so cool and he did all of what you see here in about 30 minutes.

As a bonus, we all got gift bags, with aprons and recipes and a set of 3 excellent knives. A bread knife, a large chopper, and a paring knife.