Sashimi

I read with great admiration the dinner menu of the recent G8 summit at Hokkaido.

No doubt it brings much criticism. There are 18 courses in this feast, including caviar, goose liver, and six or seven kinds of wine. How could you have all these (publicly) after discussing the problem of food and poverty in developing world just an hour ago ?

The first idea comes to my mind is: Maybe sashimi is a better choice. Dishes of this kind appear humble but could be luxurious and have elegant presentation. After all, pieces of raw fish get along well with the idea of environment protection - you don't need any fuel and produce extra greenhouse gas to make such a dish.

(A rumour says that sashimi was first developed in ancient Japan because of the limited supply of wood as domestic fuel, and people were forced to cook their rice but eat the fish raw.)

Of course not all sashimi is environment friendly. Blue fin tuna, for example, is now close to extinction - and the problem could not be solved by fish-farming. It is not only because the captive fish tastes inferior to wild ones (according to our great gourmet Chua Lam [蔡瀾]), but that all those captive fishes actually come from small wild ones that are netted and transported to the farms. No one could raise adult blue fin tuna from spawn as yet.