Sushi platter, Ko, Intercontinental Hotel, Singapore
Here are some tips I learnt about eating nigiri sushi after reading the book The Zen of Fish. Nigiri sushi are those sushi with a slice of fish, squid, or perhaps egg placed on top of a small slab of rice.
1. Do not mix wasabi into your soy sauce and apply it indiscriminately – in Japan, sushi chefs would probably have put a little wasabi inside a nigiri, using a larger dab with fatty fish and a smaller one with lean fish. Extra wasabi is never served on the side.
2. Pickled ginger is not supposed to be gobbled down as an appetiser. Those slices of ginger are meant to cleanse the palate between servings of different kinds of fish so that you don’t mix their flavours on your tongue.
3. Do not dip the rice side of your nigiri in the soy sauce. You should be dipping the fish side.
4. Eat your nigiri in one bite. Not two.
5. Use your fingers to pick up sushi – that’s what most Japanese do.