"tataki" news and stories

Each Thursday, we round up a selection of scrumptious links from our friends over at YumSugar. Here's what they've got cooking this week:

• If you recorded PBS' showing of Food, Inc. last night, watch it with the perfect pairing -- popcorn!
• Eat a healthy treat on Earth Day with coconut pineapple loaf cake.
• Don't even think about saving Mother Nature anything on an empty stomach.
• Test your tasty-bits system know-how.
• Take a bite of out a Greek salad on a toothpick.
• Who says you can't drink your Sunday Best?
• Recycle your beef -- Japanese style -- with this tataki recipe.

While chef and restaurateur Nobu Matsuhisa continues to wrestle with boycotts by environmentalists and plenty of celebrity scorn for not removing endangered Atlantic bluefin tuna from his worldwide menu, savvy restaurateurs at sushi joints like Tataki in San Francisco, Bamboo in Portland, Ore., and Mashiko in Seattle have embraced 100-percent sustainable sushi menus, which means you can toss aside the handy seafood guide in your wallet and enjoy your meal guilt-free.

These thoughtful sushi chefs are substituting sustainable items like Arctic char for red-listed farm-raised salmon; and U.S. farm-raised kampachi in place of hamachi. At Tataki, they're even welding some clever culinary slight-of-hand by swapping silky sustainable sablefish for the red-listed farm-raised eel traditionally used for unagi. They've dubbed it "faux-nagi" instead, and customers are clamoring for more.