Sushi, revived

 As with many good things, I am picky with sushi.

Fish is the centerpiece. It needs to be good, more than good. Otherwise I prefer to eat a carrot and a piece of bread (that's another story to write, how I prefer a good carrot to so-so fish, and that means that one must be able to recognize a good carrot).

Then is the rice. I love rice. If I was forced to choose one food and eat nothing else for the rest of my life, I would surely go for rice. Of course there are tastier foods, but one I could imagine eating every single day of my life? I don't think so. 

But rice needs to be good too. And hot. Steaming fresh rice, which smells like a paddy field when ripe... Mmmhhh. That's why I am somehow disappointed by sushi rice. It's cold. And the vinegary taste is completely unnecessary.

Finally comes the nori seaweed. It complements fish and rice really well. Maki rolls are a great invention. But here again, I add a restriction. Nori is wonderful when it is crisp and crunchy. Unfortunately, when you turn it into a maki roll, it gets soft with the contact of the rice.

So I started again from scratch, and reinvented the simplest and best raw fish-with-rice-and-seaweed recipe. I don't dare call it sushi because this is probably not genuine, but it is genuinely good! Here is how it goes.

Preparation

1 - Buy very good fresh fish and cut it into slices (not big, not too small). 

2 - Steam some rice, for instance thai rice (avoid non-stick rice: we want the rice to stay together)

3 - Cut the nori seaweed into 10-15cm squares. Bake them in the oven (150°C) for a few minutes, so that they are warm and crisp. This is necessary if the pack is not freshly opened; even if so, the extra-crispness is worth the effort.

4 - Pour a little soy sauce into a small bowl. Pour a few tablespoons of oil into another bowl (olive oil is perfect).

5 - Nothing. Preparation ends here. Jump to Eating

Eating

Take a square of nori in your hand.

With a teaspoon, drop and smear a few drops of oil on the nori. The oil film will keep the rice from wetting the nori, keeping it crisp until it reaches your mouth.

With chopsticks or a spoon, put a moutful of rice on the nori.

Pick a slice of fish, dip it lightly in soy sauce if you like, then place it on top of the rice. Roll up and bite into it immediately.

So easy, so good... 💗

Calling the salesman's bluff

photo: Michael Reeve (flickr)

Call it bluff if you don't want to call it bullshit. The salesman is here to make deals. He is not here to solve problems, not here to help others, not here to help society advance.

Don't expect courage. Expect bluff. Expect spiel.

Above all, don't expect truth. For the success of a real-estate deal, truth is irrelevant. What is relevant is to tell your target what they want to hear, whatever helps close the deal.

First, flatter your target. Smile. Caress. Speak the same language. Make yourself funny if needed. You experienced it, human vanity is a bottomless pit. Sometimes, you may even feel how you yourself revel in flattery from others.

When it comes to serving the bluff itself, above all, make it simple. Reduce issues to a single number: a price. Plain dollars. Health care? US-Europe defense alliance? WHO  governance? Boil down any issue to a number of dollars. Then let your gut speak: is that what I want to do with so many dollars? Or do I want to keep the dollars? (normally, keep the dollars).

Then, exaggerate. Depending on what side of the bluff you are, describe the number as either huge or insignificant. Nothing in between.

Of course, make sure you use decoys. That can be a rival customer, a hare you pull out to expedite an urgent decision. This is real-estate agent 101. It can also be a strawman you put up to justify why the deal has failed, if that were to happen. Decoys make sure it is never your fault, so that you can come back later to the same targets with another potential deal, even bigger, even better than the last.

What remains is then simply to fill the void. Never stop talking. Repeat, rephrase, expand. It should be effortless. If you've been doing it for 50 years since starting out in business, it has become a second nature.

Many people get offended by your bluff. This is totally beyond the point.

Over those years in business, you have also been schooled by your lawyer about what you may say or not. You automatically include the required disclaimers as you speak. When stating anything controversial, you mechanically indicate that it is "what some believe" or "what many people think". You pepper your problematic sentences with "maybes" and "probablys", which automatically deactivate any lie that they may contain. And you make sure that your claims, if not demonstrable, are at least not falsifiable, in the Popperian sense: if you state that an action is a world's first, you may be disproved. But if you claim that your deal is the most important or the most beautiful, then you are invulnerable.

This is not rocket science. It is indeed but a minor art, it has been described in books. Many people get offended by your bluff and they totally miss the point. They may enrage, they may hassle you or hate you. This is of no importance whatsoever. They are simply not the target for this particular deal. You know it by heart: if someone doesn't buy your bluff, just ignore them and move on to the next receptive person, to the next juicy deal. Move on. Just move on.