The Next Contestant on "The Rice is Right!"....

Fast food.  In North America, that innocent term has become synonymous with 'fat food', and in much of Europe, it's even worse.  In France, micro-farmer purveyors of spring lamb and fine herbs have, with artisanal cheesemakers and patissiers alongside, taken up arms and Molotov cocktails to underline their opinion that the Golden Arches are nothing less than a mortal threat to nutrition, tradition, and all that has gone into thousands of years of painstaking evolution of everything that is good about food.

Whether you agree or not is the subject for a different forum.  But it does leave one with an interesting conundrum.  Why is it, that when you are on the run - either "starving" after school, or between business meetings, or on the highway between home and vacation, that the choices most often on offer for instant gratification are overwhelmingly bad for us?  Whether it's "Pizza Pockets", or fried chicken (with biscuits AND gravy!!) or burgers featuring three full breakfasts' worth of bacon - all are keenly (and intelligently) targeted towards the most primal and base of human taste cravings - sugar, salt, and fat.  We love it.  All of us do, because we let ourselves love it as if it's hardwired into our DNA.  Maybe it is. Last week's "Maclean's" magazine carried an article which noted that even the new "fruity, healthy" smoothies offered at Tim Horton's each contain more sugar than any of their donuts do.  Bottom line - it's way easier, and faster, and less of a hassle than detouring to find a Safeway to build your own salad, or stopping to sit down and eat in a place that cares enough about food to take the time to make it right....

Lately, there have been some halfhearted efforts to capture that portion of the market which is perhaps tired of yet another flabbyburger - pretty well every gas station now carries a cooler full of at least some variety of sandwiches and the occasional fruit, chef's salad, or vegetable tray.  I don't know about you - but somehow, gas station food does not scream "fresh and nutritious" at me just yet.

Along with having the great good fortune of traveling to a number of other countries, I'm a great fan of TV like "The Amazing Race", "No Reservations" and other excellent programs about food in other places.  It struck me the other day, while watching a bunch of reality show teams having to deliver lunches to shipyard demolition guys in India, that pretty well everyone on the job in India gets lunch this way at least once or twice a week, if not every day.  Every bit of food in that little round "tiffin" tin, often stacked fifteen or twenty high on the front, sides and back of some intrepid courier's bike, is home-cooked in thousands of little kitchens across India's big cities.  They don't settle for anything less - fast food based on quality.

And today, when visiting the Calgary Chapter of the Canadian Celiac Association's annual Celiac Market, I remembered something else.  Among the pretty amazing array of vendor tables set up in the hotel's ballroom, (serving delectable pastas, great chewy cookies, deep, dark brownies, pizza with artichokes...you name it, it was all GOOD, and all safe), there was one table with a nearly zen-like simplicity about it.  Three perfect triangles of shiny greeny-black, set in serried array on a pure white tabletop.

Welcome to the Onigiri Company.  Onigiri.  Now that brought back some excellent memories, particularly related to tearing around Japan on a hectic business mission fifteen years ago.  Onigiri - which literally means "taking something into your hands" is an astonishingly simple yet amazing blend of the essential flavors that have made Japanese food popular all over the world.  It's basically a ball of rice, with a highly tasty filling in the middle, all wrapped up expertly in a sheet of crisp, ethereal sheet of dried nori (extremely flavorful edible seaweed - the kind you find in sushi emporia worldwide).  Onigiri is the ultimate in fast food - something you can literally grab one or two of, and eat with one hand while steering or texting with the other.

The Onigiri Company's founders had also wandered around Japan, and thank goodness something clicked - "we gotta bring this back to Canada".  A couple of hurdles, though - Onigiri was originally designed to be made and eaten pretty much on the spot.  If you leave nori wrapped around rice too long, it absorbs moisture and takes on an insistent quality of really sticking to things it touches - like fingertips.  On the upside, that's an excellent indication of how fresh your onigiri is - if the nori is still dry, it was made mere minutes ago.

Leave it to the Japanese to apply some unique technologies to solve the nori problem.  They made machines that turned out perfect triangles of rice, with a handy hole in the middle in which the fillings were deposited.  Then, they made a machine that actually wrapped the dry nori in a plastic film, and from the land of folded paper cranes, literally origami'd that film around the rice.  The resulting culinary triumph?  Well, I picked up one of the little packages - about the size of half a small sandwich - and read steps one, two and three - zip down the tab, then pull on both ends.  Voila - like magic, the nori shrugs itself free from the wrapper, and somehow wraps itself completely around the rice, leaving you a nice smooth and dry surface to hold while taking your bites.

Nifty, indeed.  But next came the cardinal test.  I don't really care what fillings are put into Onigiri - and in fact, one of the more popular ones in Hawaii includes Spam (!) - but the key for me (and what separates the men from the boys in mass-produced sushi) is - "how's the rice?"

This rice was perfect.  No faint crunchiness, no overly sticky glop, no crumbly disintegration.  It should be noted - this is not sushi rice, which is lightly and sweetly vinegared.  Nothing but salt flavors this rice, which makes it all the more effective in making it willing to blend with a whole host of fillings.  The texture and taste are everything they're supposed to be - savory and smooth.

And the fillings?  Well, the Onigiri Company folks have wisely chosen to jump into North America with stuff we have already eaten, mixed together in interesting and satisfying ways that let you decide, after all, that you could definitely eat this again.  And maybe more than once a week.  Mine today was Yam and Salmon - something I have never paired before, but will definitely find a way to do again, by the way.  Their website explains the three "fusion tastes" they've decided to offer:

Yam n’ Salmon: Baked wild salmon, caramelized yam, fresh ginger, sweet soy sauce, white rice.
Dilly Tuna: Spicy wasabi mayonnaise, garlic dill pickles, flaky yellowfin tuna, white rice.
Sesame Veg: Crisp carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, sweet and spicy sesame marinade, brown rice.

Fusion, shmusion.  That tasted like Japan to me!  The snap of the nori, the slip of the rice, the burst of the ginger and soy sauce against the fresh wildness of the fish....  Who needs a donut!  Who needs fries drowned in gravy!  Like the little paper crane - it isn't really necessary to make a quick meal lovely, but it's lovely precisely because it isn't really necessary.

Remember the days when sushi was something that only crazy people with a culinary deathwish would try?  Have a look around Vancouver, or Calgary or Toronto these days - there's a sushi place virtually on every block now.  It's in our mall food courts too, and the Co-op Stores in Calgary have employees making it on the fly right in the store - it's become mainstream.  So you might still think seaweed is too far out there.  Maybe for some, but you know, all it takes is a few folks who will pick up the triangle, unwrap that magical origami which rewraps itself, and take a big bite.    The Onigiri Company proprietors told me today that they hope to have gas stations here - just like in Japan - have these babies in their coolers alongside the hoagies and fruit cups someday very soon.  I hungrily await the day.

They haven't been here very long - less than a month, I think.  But they will be at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival this year, and in Calgary, you can get your hands on their Onigiri at Amaranth Foods in the city's northwest.  Go get some, if you can.  Yes, they're gluten free, too.  Go check out their website for more information - at www.theonigiricompany.com.