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Fresh wasabi: ugly but health giving

Fresh Wasabi with the perfectly cooked salmon. It’s all about chemistry really.

I’ve been eyeing-up the fresh Tasmanian wasabi from the potato man at Prahran Market for a while now and finally bought a $10 knob of the stuff.
It’s a scrawny, black warty root with diminiative leaves and it came wrapped in some damp paper. It doesn’t look anything special at all but is worth over $300 a kilo.
It’s quite difficult to grow, the best grown in cool running streams rather than in the ground.
It is a member of the cruciferae or brassica family which includes Horseradish (its nearest relative), mustard, cabbages, brussel sprouts and the sputnik-shaped kohlrabi all of which cost considerably less.
Under the knobbly black skin the flesh of the wasabi graduated from pale green to white.
On it’s own this plant is nothing. But when a cell is destroyed – when it is cut, for instance – two ripsnorting sinus-clearing chemicals are released the natural pesticides sinigrin and myrosin. The same thing happens when horseradish is cut or black mustard seeds crushed.
When you buy a tube or jar of wasabi it is unlikely that you’ll be tasting the real stuff. Often it is a mixture of horseradish and/or mustard and dyed green to get the right look.

Sinigrin, it turns out, is one of those miracle chemicals now thought to kill pre-cancerous cells, especially in the colon. To some degree all brassicas contains these chemicals which give them a unique flavour.
Until this weekend I didn’t know that all these vegetables were related. Butt it may explain why I’m crazy for all of them and many children aren’t.
So to any mums and dads out there whose children won’t eat their sprouts I would suggest you explain the consequences of colon cancer, not least the discomfort that I am told is felt after a visit to the proctology department.

RECIPE: Molecular salmon with fresh wasabi

One of the problems in cooking fish is not to overcook it. A simple waay to the perfect piece of fish is to cook it at a lower temperature, in my inaccurate oven somewhere between 60 and 70C.
This technique is building on my previous experiments with molecular cuisine or gastronomy slow cooking lamb chops and beef. I simply bathe it on olive oil. The scret is to keep checking the texture. When the lawyers of muscle start to seperate it is done.

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