Spineless Sushi

     I am the new Collection Manager in the Department of Recent Invertebrates.  I am loving my job; it has been keeping me so busy that I've just now made the time to get my first post in.  After a long day, or week, I like to treat myself to sushi.  Sushi has become quite a happening food phenomenon.  As the interest has grown, more and more varieties of rolls have become available.  When I go to a new sushi restaurant I always like to try the rolls named after invertebrates, or that have invertebrate ingredients.

I am going to start with my personal favorite, the caterpillar roll.  There are some variations in the ingredients, but they always have eel on the inside and avocado on the outer top.  The eel sauce used to garnish the roll is what makes me want this roll every time I go for sushi.  It is sweet, with a mild tang.  There is no salty flavor to it, so it is a strong contrast to the flavor of soy sauce.




I really enjoy when the sushi chefs bring the caterpillar roll to life.  In the picture above, suckers from an octopus tentacle were used to give the appearance of eye, and sauce was used creatively to make antennae and legs.  Now, these are all anatomically incorrect, but I really appreciate the effort.

There are often variations on the caterpillar roll, where the eyes may be a
dash of spicy mayo (left image), there could be sesame seeds on top, or even roe (fish eggs, right image) used to decorate and add flavor.


My next favorite roll is the spider roll.  Here, the entire soft shell crab is battered, fried, and included whole in the roll.  The "soft shell" refers to when the crabs were harvested, not a particular kind of crab.  Crabs, like all arthropods, have a tough exoskeleton.  As crabs grow, they must shed their skin and develop a new one.  This process is called molting.  There is a short period of time after it molts where a crab is very soft, and this is when the crabs are harvested for a spider roll.  You can eat the entire crab, shell and all!  The mix of tempura crab and the soft shell give this roll a satisfying crunch.  My favorite pieces are the ends, because there is always some part of the crab sticking out!

Here you can see (left picture) the pincher poking out of the roll!  Yummy!

This spider roll (right picture, bottom right) was given the appearance of legs and antennae by creative use of the sauce.

I recently tried a grasshopper roll.  This looks a bit like a caterpillar roll with the avocado on the top, but it is quite different on the inside.  It had fried shrimp on the inside and some tangy barbecue sauce on the top that gave it a spicy kick!

The butterfly roll was very interesting because the ingredients changed half-way through "it's life" (ie, me eating it!).  It began with eel on top with a bit of seasoned mayo and a drizzle of eel sauce, and then morphed into salmon on top.  Throughout the inside was scallion.  This roll stood out for all the different flavor combinations at different sections of the roll.  The metamorphosis of flavors give the butterfly roll an apt name.

Last but not least, is my favorite roll, EVER: The double eel white roll.  While eels are vertebrates, I am including this because of the sauce artistry of what I interpret as an invertebrate.  This roll has white eel on the top and dark eel on the inside.  The sauce garnish was done in amazing fashion to kick it up a notch and keep me still thinking about this dish!  Fantastic!

So, what's next?  I have just found an interesting sushi restaurant, here in Norman, that has nigiri rolls (a small mound of rice with the meat laying on top) with sea urchin, mantis shrimp, sea prawn, octopus tentacle, saltwater clam and more!  I can't wait to try these next time!