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While Mrs. Hisa steeped fresh fava beans in sugar syrup, Stephen dry-fried baby chartreuse peppers. I made a salad of crunchy green algae and meaty bonito fish cubes tossed with a bracing blend of soy and ginger juice. Mrs. Hisa created a tiny tumble of Japanese fiddleheads mixed with soy, rice vinegar, and salted baby fish.
For the horse mackerel sushi, Stephen skinned and boned several large sardine-like fillets and cut them into thick slices along the bias. I made the vinegared rice and then we all made the nigiri sushi. After forming the rice into triangles, we topped each one with a slice of bamboo grass, as if folding a flag.
Last, we made the wanmori, the heart of the tenshin. In the center of a black lacquer bowl we placed a succulent chunk of salmon trout and skinned kabocha pumpkin, both of which we had braised in an aromatic blend of dashi, sake, and sweet cooking wine. Then we slipped in two blanched snow peas and surrounded the ingredients with a bit of dashi, which we had seasoned with soy to attain the perfect whiskey color, then lightly salted to round out the flavor.
Using our teacher's finished tenshin as a model, we arranged most of the dishes on three polished black lacquer rectangles, first lightly spraying them with water to suggest spring rain. Then we actually sat down and ate the meal. To my surprise, the leaf-wrapped sushi, the silky charred peppers, candied fava beans, and slippery algae did taste cool and green.
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