by Emily Darrell
Staff Writer

If you ask Mary Tsuchihashi how she learned so much about Japanese cooking, she’ll tell you it’s “being married to a Japanese man for 48 years.”

Tsuchihashi, who taught an adult education course in classical Japanese cooking at Powhatan High School last week, will also tell you that you’re lucky she’s the one teaching the class, not him.

“He doesn’t know how to make any of these things,” Tsuchihashi joked.

Tsuchihashi, a proponent of hands-on learning, allowed her enthusiastic class of 17 to try their luck at making norimaki rolls (rice and vegetables wrapped in seaweed), tuna sashimi (raw tuna, often served with wasabi and soy sauce), and Japanese omelets. (What’s the difference between a Japanese and an American omelet? A Japanese omelet is made in a rectangular pan and you won’t find ham or cheese in it.)

Tsuchihashi started the class off by dispelling the popular notion that “sushi” is synonymous with raw fish.  “Sushi is just vinegared rice,” Tsuchihashi said. Not, she said, that raw fish is something one need be afraid of.

“It’s not scary for us at all,” she said of eating Japanese food at home. “I don’t know about you.”

Tsuchihashi introduced the class – some members for the first time – to ingredients such as kanpyo (ground gourd shavings), dashi (a Japanese cooking stock), and red pickled ginger.

Alice Bolden is a friend of Tsuchihashi’s who attended Wednesday night’s class and also the class she taught last semester in making sukiyaki, a type of Japanese beef soup.

“It was phenomenal,” Bolden said of the sukiyaki class. “I left here quite stuffed.”

Class participants seemed pleased with the sushi course as well – not only with the amount of eating they got to do (which was a lot) but also with Tsuchihashi’s plentiful tips: Plastic wrap on a sushi mat makes rolling the sushi easier. There is no reason not to use a rice cooker. There’s nothing wrong with frozen tuna.

Tsuchihashi said she’s been a fan of the hands-on learning approach since culinary school, which she attended after her children had all left house. She liked how each day she would show up to class not knowing what dish she’d be making or who among her classmates she’d be partnered with.

“You can watch somebody do [something] forever and ever and ever,” Tsuchihashi said. “But if you don’t do it yourself, you’re not ever gonna learn how to do it.”