PHASE 2 FUNAZUSHI

I have been waiting since 2007 to make this: the first European version of the Japanese grandfather of sushi.

Nowadays people know sushi as boiled rice slighty flavored with vinegar, pressed into a small mound and topped with raw fish. In fact, it is the fish – from sea bass to sea urchin – that matters the most. The very first sushi of history, made almost a thousand years ago, was all about rice. Fish serves as a fermenting trigger, turning rice into an acidic, cheese like matter.

The original archeo-sushi is still prepared in the countryside north of Kyoto, in the area around lake Biwa. I came across it in a shop in Kyoto in 2003 and took it with me to Europe. Nobody could tell me exactly what the stuff was. In 2007 I went back to Japan and visited Hiroshi Tanaka, one of the few artisanal funazushi makers left in the area. We became friends and since then, he taught me to make miso at home and I sent him samples of my fermented vegetables. Funazushi remains the ultimate challenge, though. It is not just a matter of reproducing an elaborate technique. It is also a question of exploring cultural bridges between Italy, where fish is lactofermented in the form of sardines, and Japan where fermentation is that of a grain. More important still, funazushi is made with local fish from a lake. It is an activity which relies on a specific ecological framework: a limit of water pollution and a wise management of water resources. This is why a support this kind of food. Because it is a indirect way of saying that our rivers and lakes should be fit for healthy fish to swim in them and that fish comsumption ought to be managed with local resources.

Back to the tenches, they have been cleaned and places under a weight in a crock full of salt for 40 days. Soon I will have to wash them and dry them in the air for one night, before placing them in layers with boiled rice back inside the crock. Hiroshi Tanaka is following the whole process by mail, adivising me on what to do.

In a month, I will start a new batch, using bigger tenches.

I think I am getting close to phase 2 of the funazushi procedure. The 20 small tenches I got from the pond of Giacomo Musso near Carmagnola