When I signed up for a “sushi and fish cutting” class with Buddha Bellies Cooking School in Tokyo I imagined delicately slicing slabs of fish into small pieces to put into my sushi. I couldn’t have been more wrong. This was only my second cooking class ever, my first being a pasta class in Italy.
I stood with the others in the class around the table and watched the chef Ayuko Akiyama show us how to properly scale, bone, gut and slice up a small Horse Mackerel fish sashimi style. I was terrified. We had to hold the fish with our bare hands?! What? I like fishing but usually I just grill or bake the whole fish and pick off the meat. She made it look so easy.
We each had to grab a fish and very sharp knife. I looked around and tried to copy the woman across from me, she looked like she knew what she was doing. Cutting the scales off was really delicate-if you cut too deep than you risked cutting too much of the actual meat off. Chef Ayuko came over and helped me several times. This class was really hands on! My first fish came out okay, the second fish I got it down much faster. I’m really glad that we had to do two fish, now I will remember the steps to bone and gut a fish myself! Chef Ayuko said that small fish are the hardest to clean so if you can do these, you can do any fish.
After we cleaned the fish and sliced up the meat, Chef Ayuko taught us how to make spring rolls, sushi rolls and sashimi. The chef is a sake sommelier so she introduced us to two new local sakes. We all sat down and enjoyed our delicious meal! I really enjoyed this class, I highly recommend taking one if you visit Tokyo. It was truly a window into Japanese culture.