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Now we know that sometimes the burn hurts so good and sometimes, you might give the sushi chef a heart attack by adding too much wasabi to your shoyu. If you’re a purist, less is more. If you’re crazy, well, you’re crazy. There will never be a right nor wrong when it comes to how much wasabi – it’s completely subject to taste.
Quality of wasabi, though, is not so subjective. Most of us are accustomed to the wasabi paste made from mixing water with a powder, that might even have green food coloring added to it! However, the best sushi bars will have fresh wasabi flown in from Japan. It is a subtle green root that looks like the unwanted alien love child of gingerroot, regular horseradish, and an anorexic pineapple. Finely grated, and with no other additives, it has a much gentler taste than the powder-paste.
Fresh wasabi can go for almost $100/pound, which makes me wonder why I shouldn’t just grow the stuff myself and peddle it to the local sushi bars here in LA. Frogfarm in Seattle, WA has baby plants for only $7.50 each. You can also order from Pacific Farms in Eugene, OR, who will sell you a half dozen baby wasabi plants for $23.95. Sounds like a tiny investment that will have huge ROI in the end...BUT be warned, wasabi is very very difficult to grow, and will produce a root that might be usable at the end of 18 months. Still worth a shot. I might be an American wasabi millionaire in 2007.
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11-09-2005 @3:03PM Tyler Gentry said... I love wasabi and would like to know where to buy a book on how to grow this amazing plant at home here in Gibsons BC. Any references would help, thanks
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11-09-2005 @5:36PM Dmnkly said... Tyler...
A book might be tough. I read an article a few years back about the whole Pacific Farms endeavor, and they basically said the Japanese wasabi farms treated growing tips like state secrets. Apparently, it was a HUGE deal to get the farm up and running in the States. But on the Pacific Farms website, they do have a page with instructions for growing at home, and I think they'll sell you both seeds and the plants themselves.
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11-09-2005 @5:38PM sarah said... ed -
you should go to that wasabi place, order the $2.50 wasabi ball, then take home every last shred of the stuff in a doggie bag!!
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10-04-2005 @2:03PM Neshura said... I nursed along a Wasabi japonica plant for about 8 months, and I can verify that it is indeed very difficult to grow. It sunburned easily, was regularly snacked on by pests, and eventually dropped all its leaves and died outright. It is not for the average gardener to try to grow outside of its native habitat.
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10-04-2005 @2:25PM Beth - The Zen Foodist said... I never really thought about where wasabi comes from. Thanks for the info!
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10-04-2005 @2:31PM Dmnkly said... While I haven't purchased the plants themselves from Pacific Farms, I can vouch for the tubes of paste... top notch stuff. Even after a couple of months in the freezer, they're still way better than the fake stuff.
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10-04-2005 @3:29PM Osh said... This is amazing
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10-04-2005 @8:36PM B said... I read somewhere that the pacific northwest is the perfect climate to grow wasabi, but most high-end Sushi resturants will only buy wasabi that comes from Japan.
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10-04-2005 @4:50PM sarah said... neshura: did you grow them in pots/containers, or so they need to be in the ground? my little wasabi plants will have to be l.a. babies - grown in a concrete jungle...
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10-04-2005 @8:10PM JPster said... Interesting. At $100/pound I'm going to assume I've never been served fresh wasabi!
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10-05-2005 @4:39AM Dmnkly said... JPster...
Probably not. It's estimated that only 5% of the sushi bars IN JAPAN use real, fresh wasabi (http://www.suntimes.com/output/food/foo-news-hot07.html), primarily due to cost considerations. The only place you're getting it Stateside is in the super high-end establishments.
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10-05-2005 @11:44PM Ed said... Actually there are a number of non-high-end sushi bars that have fresh wasabi available. And $70/lb (what it goes for at the Mitsuwa near Chicago) isn't really that much when you realize how much fresh wasabi you get when you grate a pound.
The high-end places will often offer you fresh wasabi for free. The lower-end places will charge you a little bit for it. The lower-end place near my office that has fresh wasabi charges $2.50 for a very large mound (think racquetball sized) of fresh grated wasabi.
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