Salmon Cutting & Sushi Making Competition @ Nagomi Shabu Shabu Food Bloggers Night

A live demonstration on cutting and filleting a Salmon Trout and making your own sushi were two of the activities lined up for guests who attended the Nagomi Shabu Shabu Food Bloggers Night.
It was eye opening to see a whole salmon in real together and the entire filleting process was interesting. Always a good thing to know how the food ends up on your table in order to appreciate it more.

This was the salmon trout used for the demonstration, not the usual Norwegian Salmon but imported from US. I don’t know about you but I was quite surprised to see salmon trout looked like that – a little round, fat and even longer than my forearm! Nagomi mentioned that the market price for a whole salmon trout could fetch RM200.

This is John and he’s from Myanmar. He has been an apprentice to Master Chef Ikuo Tanabe-san for years and among his specialties are preparing sushi, cooking soup and filleting salmon.
As you may have guessed, he was the one who demonstrated the salmon cutting and showed the guests how to make a California roll. Seen here he was preparing a Soft Shell Crab Maki for other customers before the event started.

An hour into the event it was announced that the salmon cutting would take place. Everyone immediately surrounded the table and positioned themselves for the best photo-taking angle.
I think I had quite a nice position thanks to my seating being just next to where the demonstration took place lol. So firstly the salmon’s head had to removed, then another sharper knife was used to cut the fish into half by slicing along its spine.

The removed head, tail and bones still had flesh on them so they would be used to prepare soup or stock. Nothing goes to waste here. Even the removed skin would be used to prepare the crispy Fried Salmon Skin. I am sure most of you have seen it before in Kaiten Sushi restaurant.

After that the belly would be sliced off, usually used to prepare the very smooth Salmon Belly Sashimi.

Next was an important step to remove any bones that might still remain in the salmon fillets.

To do this, first John had to swipe the salmon fillets using his hands to feel for any bones. This job calls for a professional, a really experienced one too. In case any bone was found, a tweezers would be used to remove it as shown in the photo. Wow the bone was slim and long alright, can’t imagine if I accidentally swallowed one of it.

The salmon fillets, cut into smaller pieces after having all the deeply embedded bones removed. The deep red color of the salmon indicated that it had a healthy diet of shrimps and krills, which contributed to the red pigmentation of the meat (salmon is a white fish actually) and being a good supplement of antioxidant for us.

Salmon fillets wrapped in food wrapping film and stored for future use.

The sushi making competition took place after that, where three tables were chosen based on lucky draw mechanics with each sending a participant. But, it was not before John showed how the California roll was done. I forgot who was the winner already lol.
But, I remembered Jean being one of the contestants and won one of the consolation prizes. Although it was a consolation prize, Nagomi Shabu Shabu was very generous by giving out cash vouchers. The amount was not little yeah.

Then he demonstrated how to prepare a Soft Shell Crab roll again, this time for the other guests who missed it earlier. Just to let you know, the Soft Shell Crab maki he was preparing there was ours hehe.

And tadah. Done! Impressed? My stomach certainly did, thoroughly enjoyed it lol.