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THE ZEN OF FISH: The story of sushi from samurai to supermarket
By Trevor Corson
Harper Collins, New York, 2007
Hardback: $24.95

Review by Christine Myers

Last week I was a sushi ignoramus. Untutored in the charms of vinegared rice and raw fish, I happily hid from anything cold wrapped in seaweed. In Japanese restaurants, the case full of fish at the sushi bar appealed about as much as did green eggs and ham. Then, in an act of bibliosadism, my teacher assigned Trevor Corson's sushi book, The Zen of Fish: the story of sushi from samurai to supermarket.

Nominally, The Zen of Fish tells the story of Kate Murray's quest to become a sushi chef. At the book's outset, the odds of the 20-year-old completing her course at the California Sushi Academy seem slimmer than a sheet of nori. Kate finds the Academy about as intimidating as I did the sushi bar. Though she loves nigiri and make, Kate is, to put it bluntly, a screw-up when it comes to actually making sushi. She can't slice fish, her vegetables are irregular and, even with wet hands, her nigiri clap fails to pop. Worse, she doesn't follow directions well. Her Australian teacher shouts, barks, insults and wields his knives like he comes from Kyoto, not the outback. He instructs students to sharpen their high-carbon steel knives every day. Feeling picked on and humiliated, Kate skulks away after class. Her knives rust overnight.

Kate, as both underdog and outsider, had my sympathy. Her profession is so male-dominated that a Japanese comic book, Sushi Chef Kirara's Job, documents one woman's trials. If Kirara has a tough go of it, consider the guffaws of traditional chefs at a Caucasian American girl's competence to join their ranks.

During Kate's eight-week arc from civilian to chef the reader learns nearly as much as she does, without the fish heads or pressure of a timed nigiri test. Corson seamlessly braids three strands - Kate's story, the natural history of fish, and sushi itself - to present his research as neatly and artistically as a neta case. The author's fluent Japanese makes him a useful guide on both sides of the Pacific, whether touring the world's largest fish market in Tokyo or as guest of a tiny wasabi farm in Oregon. He presents sushi's history from ancient preservation technique through Tokyo street food to high-priced delicacy. For those who already love sushi, The Zen of Fish teaches a deeper appreciation of the delicacy. Corson explains the fifth fundamental taste receptor, umami - tastiness - along with sea urchin roe, Sushi robots and Shinto folk tradition. He dishes up the science of sushi - canned mold, infected rice, fermented sake, diabolical enzymes and voracious yeasts - in tiny batches, umami as the glutamates the human taste buds adore.

After a weekend of sushi immersion, technique and terminology, I was curious about truly fresh sushi. If Kate succeeded in becoming a sushi chef, I thought, the least I could do was give it a try. Kate persists, learning to combine instinct and training with the right ingredients and presentation and her passion overcomes native lack of confidence. When she finally overcomes her repugnance to reach into a bucket of live, foot-and-a-half-long eels, I cheered. It was my turn to show comparable courage at the sushi bar. On my way to the most authentic Japanese restaurant in town, I reviewed Corson's appendix on the etiquette of sushi. Do not mix wasabi and soy sauce together into sushi gravy. Chopsticks are for sashimi, not sushi. In order to appreciate the complexity of flavors, don't add any sauce and, by the way, American wasabi isn't real. (It's horseradish and mustard, with no trace of the rare Japanese plant.)

I ordered omakase, chef's choice, as Corson suggests. The chef's job, he reminds us, is to delight the palates of his customers. My reward was hand rolls only five seconds old, correctly served at body temperature, rice and fish dissolving together in a bath of superb tastes. The observant chef approved that I ate ginger between fish courses to cleanse the palate; dipped only the fish side in the soy sauce so the sushi didn't disintegrate until it reached my mouth; and ate each nigiri as a single mouthful with lots of thoughtful chewing. He served up a string of handmade lusciousness - cones topped with salmon, mackerel hand rolls, delicate crunchy roe and cucumber - tastes I would not have discovered without his, and Corson's, guidance.

The Zen of Fish could have been published as a series of fascinating entertaining magazine articles, just as sushi could be reduced to the sum of its ingredients or a conveyor belt of pre-made California rolls. But the whole experience requires more depth. Such a well-crafted and presented book is better read in a single bite: umami.

The Children's Blizzard
By David Laskin
2004, HarperCollins
Paperback: $13.95
ISBN-10: 0-06-052076-0.

It is an unseasonably warm day on the prairie in January. Townsfolk throughout the Great Plains take advantage of the break in the unrelenting cold and snow, venturing out of their homes to tend to chores they could not complete during the mercilessly cold and snowy weather. Cattle and horses emerge from their long captivity into the fresh air, farmers travel to town to replenish much-needed supplies and children return to the schoolhouse, all unaware of a massive storm gathering energy, ready to unleash it full force, leaving death and misery in its wake.

The Children's Blizzard is a harrowing account of the blizzard of January 12, 1881. It was known as the “school children's blizzard” for the unusually high percentage of children who died while attempting to find shelter after being dismissed from school or from complications while recovering from severe exposure. Those who managed to live lost fingers, arms, toes, feet, legs—anything that froze in the bitter cold. Author David Laskin recounts the event using published newspaper articles and detailed documentation from the U. S. Signal Corps, the predecessor to our current National Weather Service. The reader is given a glimpse into the lives of several families, from their decision to immigrate into the United States from small Norwegian and Ukrainian towns, through their difficult journeys overseas and finally to homesteads in the Dakota Territory, Minnesota and Nebraska where life was unimaginably difficult due to the harsh weather and swarms of crop-annihilating grasshoppers.

The author has painstakingly researched his subject, resulting in a story detailing of the intricacies of the science of weather, but skimpy on character development. The cast of real-life characters is so large—and their names so similar—it is difficult to keep them straight. The most memorable character, the one who is given the lion's share of pages, is Lieutenant Thomas Woodruff: the man charged with tracking storms in the Dakota Territory, alerting the people of coming severe shifts in weather, and sending out severe cold warnings as merited (an action he failed to do until far too late). The storm sped through the Great Plains at such a rapid rate that, by the time the cold warning flags had been hoisted, they would have been in whiteout conditions and unable to see the white flags. Much of the book contains tedious explanations of the workings of cold fronts, barometric pressure and the political infighting of the people in the U. S. Signal Corps, slowing down the narrative and losing the reader's connection with those who suffered and died.

The book is a short, easy-to-read introduction to the science of weather. As a general history buff and someone who admits to watching any documentary on the Discovery or History Channel, I found the book enlightening and timely, given the current attention to climate change.