Sushi?” asks my mother, eyebrows arched. “Raw fish?” My daughter is not bringing the smelly world of animal-eaters into a vegetarian home, her eyes warn. This, of course, is where wiki-research comes in. So I say, “Chill Maa.” Sushi: Japanese dish made of vinegar-spiked rice usually combined with other ingredients (uncooked or cooked and not necessarily fish). The eyes relent and I am off to Enoki, the Japanese restaurant at The Grand, to be an itamae san (chef) for a day.

I was bracing myself for the chaos of a steamy kitchen, huge grills, hot plates and refrigerators and a dozen junior chefs bustling around. To my surprise, this is a neat open kitchen, with a huge chimney that funnels off the smoke. Senior chef and Enoki’s assistant director Pankaj Ambardar shows me around his workplace with pride. Now, time to work. First, you’ve got to get into the skin of an itamae san. So I put on a chef coat, a black apron and a Japanese cap. Do I look like a clown? “You look like a professional chef,” says Pankaj.  

At the cooking table, the ingredients are laid out. We are making a yasai maki, a vegetarian sushi roll—in deference to my mother (and mine, let’s confess) squeamishness. “Sushi is basically vinegared rice. It evolved as a ready-to-eat food which would last long without any artificial preservative. A traditional version called izushi, with the filling of raw fish, can last up to a week in Japan. But in India, it must be eaten within 24 hours,” says Pankaj as he shows me how. The trick, as I see, is a light touch.

... contd.