FOOD&DRINKISushi: i t 's al l in the rice, apparently

Flshy flngersTony Benjamin gets to grtps with someJapanese roll play at a Your Sushf workshop,

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as well as smoked salmon. Yum!Sliced up and laid out in thebento box they looked totallyconvincing, as did the upsidedornrn uramaki Californian rollsthat follow.

By now it's clear we're allhaving fun and our bento boxesare filling up. We treat ourselveswith temaki, little hand-heldcones filled with rice, vegetablesand raw salmon that we gulpdovvn before moving on tonigiri, pellets of rice wrapped

in thinly sliced salmon, dipped in soy sauceand chomped in one. The freshly assembledingredients (Emmanuel has been slicingoff the salmon before our very eyes) havea deliciously zingy taste that's better thanany restaurant sushi I've ever eaten. NoviceClaire's eyes sparkle with similar enthusiasm- we'll definitely give this a go at home, weagree, as we pack our bento boxes and leave toface an unbelieving world.

YOUR SUSHI WORKSHOPS TAKE PLACE MONTHLYAT THE MERCURE BRIGSTOWT HOTEL, BRISTOL.CHECK WWWYOURSUSHI.CO.UK FOR FUTURE DATES.

BUT IF YOUCAN]T WAIf,.....here's afew of our fauourite sushfuendors usho'Il make itfor Aou.

Obento 67 Bddwin St, Bristol, BS1 lQZ,web: www.obento-bristol.co.u kYen Sushi 11-12 Bartlett St, Bath, BA1zQZ, tel: 01225 333313, web: www.yensushi .co.ukDashi Sushi Temple Meads Station,Br istol , BS1 6QG; Bath Spa Stat ion, Bath,BA1 1SU.Masa 42'46 Baldwin St, Bristol,BS1 1PN, tel: 0117 930 0600, web:m a s aja pa n ese resta u ra n t.co mYo! Sushi Cabot Circus, Br istol ; Cr ibbsCauseway, Br istol ; Mi lsom Pl, Bath, web:www.yosushi.com

t t's really annoying when you manage to

I pull offsome new cookery challenge but

I everybody thinks you just bouglrt the stuff

I anyway. Like when I produced tr,vo bento

I boxes firll of various sushi for a bunch of

I friends. "I made this myself!" I claimed, and

I they all said "No, you didn't!", while tucking

I in approvingly. But I blooming well had!Five hours before my only experience of

sushi making had been peeking over theconveyor belt in a restaurant as professionalsknocked up delicacies to trundle under ournoses. I've eaten a fair bit, though, and reallylike it, so the prospect of being able to do itmyself seemed too good to be true. Didn'tyou have to learn for years? How could YourSushi promise to get me started in a couple ofhours? I signed up anyway, and made my wayto a riverside hotel in central Bristol for anafternoon of surprises.

The first surprise was our guide to sushimaking - a young and energetic Frenchmancalled Emmanuel. I'm not being racist, but... Ihad been expecting someone a bit more, well...Japanese? Turns out that Clifton-dwellingEmmanuel Letellier's parents had employeda Japanese chef in their restaurant in Franceand, over time, the young lad learned thesushi arts from him. The fascination hadgripped him and, as he put it: "Once you trainas a sushi chef it's a way of life - you can't doanything else."

Surprise No 2 was to discover fromEmmanuel that it's not all about raw fish."Sushi isn't about certain dishes, it's a wayof cooking. It's all about the rice. What youput with it is your own choice." So we beginby watching rice preparation - that's the

triclcy bit, it seems, and we'll definitely needto practise that at home. But, in the spirit of'Blue Peter', Emmanuel has some he preparedearlier, nicely glazed with vinegar, salt andsugar and stickily ready for the task.

The third surprise was discovering thatone of my table-mates Claire has never evenseen sushi - she received the workshopexperience as a present. An ex-midwife witha splendidly open mind, she's nonethelesstotally unfazed and we buckle down to our firsttask - trimming cucumber and avocado andspreading rice on thin sheets of nori seaweedbefore assembling and rolling hosomaki. WithEmmanuel's guidance it's surprisingly failsafeand, a few minutes later, we all have freshlyrolled Churchillian cigars before us. Strikingwhile the iron is hot, we rush on to makefutomaki - a bigger, more luxuriously stuffedroll into which I put pickled carrot, cucumber,shredded crabstick and pickled horseradish

VENUEMAGAZINE 23 JUL -1 AUG 33

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