Sushi Spills
By Dimgwrthien
Disclaimer: I do not own CSI: NY or affiliates.
Mac sat at his laptop, scrolling down the search page. "Sushi, sushi…" he muttered to himself, trying to find a page with a recipe. Every time he tried one of the links, the recipe would come up as something he had never seen in his life.
Finally giving up, Mac opened up his email. As much as he hated admitting it, the site did come with a free instant messenger. He looked at his list of contacts, trying to find his friend, Haruka. Haruka had been a close friend of Claire's since they moved to New York, and she ran the closest sushi restaurant and store.
Luckily, she was online. Mac typed out a quick message to her. "Haruka? Are you there?"
There was a bleeping sound as she answered back. "Mac! What's up?"
Mac typed back quickly. Years of working with computers taught him some speed with his fingers. "I'm trying to make a nice dinner for Claire, and I know how much she likes sushi. Think you could help me with making it?"
"Come on over," Haruka typed.
Mac thanked her and started pulling on his coat. He would have over an hour until Claire returned from work. Then he left as fast as possible, walking between the people on the crowded city block. It was only two blocks from the apartment, and he found the shop easily.
As usual, the shop was partly-filled with people ranging from tourists to locals from China Town deciding to come deeper into the city. Haruka stood behind the counter with her laptop balanced on one of the chairs. Her son, Yuki, who was only about seven years old, sat at the big chair close to the back door.
"Hey, Mac," Haruka greeted, pulling up a large bamboo mat to the counter. Haruka was a pretty woman of about thirty with dark hair and dark grey eyes classic of her race. Her face was very delicate unlike her hands, which were wide and rough. She waved him back, opening a small door to let him through to where she stood. "What's the occasion for cooking?"
"Nothing. Claire just loves sushi so much that I thought I'd try a hand at making it."
Haruka grinned and snapped something at her son in Japanese. He quickly retracted his hand from where he was about to touch a pile of uncooked crabs. He remained on the chair, looking sullen.
"Alright. You use one of these mats," she explained, waving the corner of the bamboo mat at him. "I'll give you one of mine if you like doing this enough." Mac nodded at her, watching her as she unrolled seaweed onto the mat. "Then you need the rice."
Mac followed Haruka as she turned to the opposite counter, bringing up a large pot of rice. "Cal-Rose works nice, and it's easy to buy," she told Mac, scooping up some of the rice with the flat spoon. "I get mine from my family over in Japan every once in a while, but it's easiest to use Cal-Rose for this. Besides, Claire'll be glad to see that you can cook," she joked, elbowing Mac, who grinned. "Equal water and rice, remember that. Helps make it sticky, as everyone likes to call it. Sticky rice." She grinned the way she did at her customers which had made her famous early in her career. "Boil a minute, simmer twenty, stand alone ten. Works easy, see?" She pulled out a bottle and showed it to Mac. "Vinegar. I'll give you one of these bottles, too, if you want. Just pour it over." She worked quickly and steadily, concentrated on her work.
Haruka poured the rice over the seaweed, flattening it with the flat spoon. "I know that Claire likes the Futo-Maki, so I'll show you that kind. Bigger rolls, you see. Mushroom, omelet, bamboo shoots, boor, cucumber, kampyo. Clean the kampyo and mushrooms." She ran the mushrooms and the long stream of kampyo under the faucet she had. "Take longer to wash them. I didn't because I just cleaned this bunch. Then you cut."
Haruka had to be talented as she made everything in her job look easy. She took the knife and cut equally sized chunks of both within a matter of seconds. "You're going to simmer them in soy sauce, dashi stock, sugar, and a bit of mirin for a while."
Mac watched with interest as she turned up the heat on one of her pans and dumped them in.
"Now for my favorite part," she told him, turning up the heat on a second pan. From visiting the shop for such a long time, Mac had grown used to seeing her full stove of pans with at least three going at once. "Omelet. Make it like a normal one." She cracked an egg over the pan, watching it simmer and start to harden as she added a small pinch of sugar. "And the cucumber." Haruka moved again to the first counter, cutting up a cucumber that had been put to the side of her cutting board, making it into long sticks.
"I think it's done -" Mac started saying, pointing to the mushrooms and kampyo, but she was already turning down the heat, letting them finish roasting.
"Yup," she agreed, spreading the ingredients over the rice. She added in the sticks of cucumber, then looked at the omelet. "And you want this to be nice and long to fit inside the roll." She turned the eggs once more, letting them harden a bit into a long shape, then picked up the pan to put them over the rest.
"Rolling," she told him, then grabbed the sides of the bamboo mat. "Yuki!" she called to the boy. "Come over here."
Yuki came over, moving an upturned bucket from under the counter, stepping on it and taking his mother's job.
Haruka stepped back, smiling at the boy who rolled the sushi up in an even spiral. "I've been trying to get him to help me out more. He's a smart boy. So desu ne," she said to Yuki as he finished. She examined the roll and smiled. "Yoi!" Yuki grinned at her, showing missing teeth among the baby teeth. He pulled the roll out from inside the mat, leaving a perfect roll. Haruka kissed his cheek as the boy ran off to his chair again.
Taking her knife again, Haruka showed Mac how to cut the rolls into smaller pieces. When she finished, she smiled at him.
"That doesn't look that hard," Mac told her, looking at the finished sushi.
"Good," Haruka said. "It's your turn. You try making it while I wrap this up. A gift for Claire in case you can't get this."
Mac grinned back at her joke. Haruka set the bamboo mat in front of him and put her hands on her hips.
"First the seaweed," he muttered, putting some of it on the mat. "Then the rice…" As he turned to get some of the rice Haruka had made, an elderly man sat at the bar close to where he was trying to cook.
"What're you making?" he asked, peering over the counter. Mac saw that it was a younger man, probably around his twenties, with an obvious mid-western accent - an obvious tourist.
"Sushi," Haruka answered for him. "What would you like?"
"Whatever you think I'd like," the man said, and Mac knew that the man had to be a tourist.
Haruka joined Mac in making sushi, even if she was moving twice his speed.
"I'm not good with sushi, but I think you just did something wrong," the man pointed out, staring at Mac's progress. Haruka turned to Mac as soon as the man said it. The seaweed had fallen off of the mat. Mac fixed it quickly, trying to cover up his mistake. He regained his composure once it came to cutting the cucumber, an activity that he was familiar with. He could go on with the egg just as well, however, and with the kampyo and mushrooms. In fact, Mac thought he did perfectly until it came to the rolling.
"I think you're doing it wrong again," the tourist said to Mac when Mac managed to drop half of the ingredients while picking up the top half of the bamboo. Mac scrambled to grab them and managed to keep them on the roll.
"I got it," he said to Haruka. He worked slowly, causing the little boy to snigger at him, but making sure that nothing else dropped. He sighed in relief as the entire roll stayed in place, then he tried to pry it out of the mat.
"I really think there's something wrong there," the tourist said, and Mac growled slightly at him as he bent to pick up all of the dropped ingredients.
Haruka handed him several rolls in white paper. "Use these," she told him, grinning. "Take the credit for them. Just never, never, never let Claire make you cook. Anything." She pat his shoulder.
Mac pushed his wrist against his forehead, feeling embarrassed. "Thanks for the help, anyway," he said to her, grinning back. "Need help cleaning?"
"Cleaning?" Haruka grinned even wider. "I'm not sure if I would ever trust you in this building again!"
As Mac left the room, still blushing just a little, the tourist said to him, "Don't feel bad. You should have seen the first time I made a sandwich. Of course, I was four years old, but my mother still hasn't let me in her kitchen."
When Mac returned to his apartment, Claire was unlocking the door. She smiled at him. "What're you doing?" she asked him, glancing at the packages.
"Trying to make sushi?" he tried.