History of sushi

Sushi began as a way to preserve fish. Fresh fish was pressed between rice and a lot of salt by a heavy stone and left for a few weeks. The natural fermentation of the rice, together with the salt would help to preserve the fish. After a few months, they used to throw away the rice and only eat the fish. Over time, they preferred to eat the rice together with the fish, so they began to not wait so long before eating it so that the rice still had some flavour.

At the beginning of the 19 ^th century, there were a lot of food stalls around Tokyo harbour, and that's where chefs became more creative in using seaweed to make sushi, introducing vinegar in the rice, and turning nigiri into a kind of fast food for the workers in the area. From Tokyo it spread to all the other parts of Japan.

California rolls have an interesting history too. In the 1960s, a popular destination for sushi chefs looking to get rich was Los Angeles . A guy called Ichiro Mashita noticed that westerners didn't really enjoy the taste of seaweed there so that's when he decided to roll it inside-out to hide it, and because he couldn't find good quality fatty tuna (toro) to use in traditional recipes, he decided to substitute it with creamy avocado. That's when the California roll was invented- the first ever inside-out. It became so popular that it spread all the way back to Japan , but it first started in America !