(lighthearted orchestral music) - We're using those same classic
old Tokyo sushi techniques. Temperatures have to
be absolutely perfect. It's the key and one of
the more difficult things. (humming traffic) (lighthearted orchestral music) Hey how's it going? Welcome to the Nimblefish. We don't have a cool story about how we came up
with the name. (laughs) We do a pretty classic Edomae-style sushi, nigiri, sashimi, and temaki is kind of the only thing we offer here. Almost all the sushi is gonna be classically found in Edo Bay, but we basically take those
techniques from those fish and apply them to what we get from there and what we get from here, but most of it has to with
a little bit of curing. (cheerful orchestral music) I have to say I didn't really like most hikarimono, or shiny fish, things like mackerel, when I
first started making sushi. Now it's probably one of my favorite fish. This is masaba, chub mackerel, really fatty fish, also very traditional like Edomae-style piece. This is sanma, pike mackerel. This one's coming from Hokkaido right now, tends to be a little
bit brinier and sweeter. Really short season as well. This one, is kohada,
gizzard shad, very briny. This one however, is
gonna have a little bit different preparation on the sujime. It's gonna be a little bit heavier pickle. Sujime is the process of curing
through salt and vinegar. Originally, all of the
curing and preservation of the fish was more or less created because it was at a time when
there wasn't refrigeration. So these things had to last longer outside at room temperature. Basically what you're
trying to do with the salt is pull impure flavors
out, pull water out of the fish, concentrate fat content. The vinegar process kind of
helps to pull salt back out and kind of seal up the
fish from oxidization. And vinegar and salt also have a bunch of sanitary properties as well which is part of the reason why it's being used for the cure process. The sanma has now began to sweat. It hasn't really absorbed much salt, but you can definitely see
the moisture coming off of it. All I'm gonna do is rinse it in vinegar and then I'll pat it dry and put it on the zaru and just let it
air dry for a little bit. Most of these mackerel-like fishes tend to be a stronger flavored fish and the sujime process
mellows out the strongest of the flavor of the fish
and kind of highlights the sweetness and fat content of the fish. Now the salt's been rinsed off and it's gonna get marinated
in the vinegar portion of the sujime for about thirty minutes. We're using those same classic
old Tokyo sushi techniques in order to boost umami within the fish and bring out the natural
flavors that the fish already has and take out some of the
flavors that are less desirable. Most of the preparations
vary based on the fish, but still the same ingredients, just maybe different amounts
or ratios and different timing. (gentle orchestral music) Tamago is probably the first
piece of sushi I had as a kid. I've always loved it. I wanna say I try it everywhere I go, so when I was able to make tamago, that was a feat in itself. I am half Japanese myself, but I don't have a ton of
Japanese culture in my family. My original plan was
to become an architect. I was going to school for it. When seeking out a job originally, it seemed like something
that I could connect to a culture that I don't know very well. It was a part-time job and
I kinda fell in love with it and eventually dropped out of school and took it on full-time, but I still do enjoy
design and woodworking and doing stuff with my hands which definitely
correlates to sushi a lot. One of my first jobs ever as an apprentice just kinda got thrown to the wolves and first thing he had
me do was make tamago. I made more of a scrambled egg and that's kind of (laughs)
how that went for me. (gentle cheerful music) We've always done a folded omelet so I really kinda geeked out
on the recipe a little bit, tried to push the
envelop of how much dashi I could get into that omelet with that and still be able to make it and I think we came up with a pretty good, pretty good idea or recipe for it and it's still one of my
favorite pieces, actually, to have at a sushi restaurant. (gentle cheerful music) For me, the most difficult
part is like heat control. The whole flipping thing
is what most people kind of focus on as being
like the difficult part or difficult technique of making tamago. The tamago pan is not,
it's a stainless steel pan with copper on the outside. It doesn't have any
nonstick qualities to it so it has to be well seasoned, temperatures have to be absolutely perfect in order for it to not stick. (gentle cheerful music) For the first few pours, there's gonna be about three layers and then
every continuous pour after that is only two layers, so there's
roughly 20 layers in there. (energetic cheerful music) Dungeness crab is a local variety of crab native to the Northwest. It goes as far South as
maybe like Santa Barbara. It's basically the crab
that I grew up having, living here in Oregon and my family was avid scuba diving family,
so we would go out pretty much every weekend and
have crab right on the beach. It's got some sweetness to it. It also has a tiny little
bit of bitterness to it and if you're getting it in
the good time of the season, it does have a lot of fat content as well which lends to the sweetness. We like to utilize all of it. We'll take off the inedibles, obviously the shell and the lungs and a few other parts of that crab, but for the most part, we save
all the fat, all the innards. The body meat's taken
apart pretty intricately as well as the claw meat and
we incorporate the kani miso, or the innards and the
fat into the body meat. The claw meat, we kind of
serve separate 'cause it is a better looking piece than the other one, but it has these different
qualities as far as texture and flavor as well. (energetic cheerful music) (shell cracking) (energetic cheerful music) (shell cracking) (spoon clinking) This is buri, yellowtail. What we're gonna do today is get it ready for the aging process. It's been cleaned. The scales have been cut off. Basically we're gonna
salt it and let it sweat and kind of like the sanma, pull out any impure flavors or water, things that are gonna help it kind of go bad in the aging process. We typically can take it roughly a week. We've done it up to about 14 days. What we're doing is creating
more umami within the fish. Also textural changes as well. We do this kind of on a daily basis until the fish decides it doesn't have much more moisture to give and so that's gonna concentrate
the flavor of the fish. Fat content's gonna be a little bit higher than it was due to the loss
of water weight as well. Then just sits until it
sweats and then we're gonna, you know, once it releases
a good amount of moisture, typically, it will take
about 15 to 20 minutes. We'll rinse it, pat it really extra dry, wrap it in paper and plastic and then kind of repeat the
process on a daily basis. (gentle slow music) There is a lot of fish
that have decent livers, but not at the size or
fat content of monkfish. Monkfish liver is almost like, for the harvestable meat, if you're including that
as like about 75% of it. For ankimo, I've definitely
learned the more traditional way which would be like to steam
and torchon the ankimo. The one that we're doing is gonna be more of a slow braise or poach and we do like a soy-based
approach on that. I did have like one of
the best ones in my life down in Los Angeles and
tried to recreate it and this is about as close as we can get. (gentle slow music) I learned from a lot of Japanese guys and they're not gonna
really tell you anything. They're just like, "You have
to figure it out for yourself. You can watch and figure it out." This is buri, yellowtail from Hokkaido. Tairagai, pen shell clam from Ichi. Ishidai, stone bream from Kagoshima. Ito katsuo, skipjack tuna coming from Kagoshima. This is kinmedai, goldeneye snapper coming from Chiba. This is kani, dungeness
crab coming from Washington. Masaba, chub mackerel coming from Japan. Toro, fatty bluefin tuna from the collar coming from Nova Scotia. Bafun uni from Hokkaido. Akami zuke, a soy marinated tuna coming from Nova Scotia. Tamago, egg omelet. (energetic piano music) It's almost like you
have to steal the ideas. No one's gonna really
tell you how to do it, you just kind of have to watch
and learn and figure it out. (energetic piano music)
