As I've blogged about before, spicy food doesn't work for me. It's physically painful in a way that drowns out the underlying flavours, so I feel nothing but discomfort and experience none of the pleasure of the food.
An example of a food that is painfully spicy for me this way is wasabi.
But whenever I mention that wasabi is too spicy for me, pedants come swooping out of the woodwork saying "Wasabi isn't a spice, it's a mustard!!" (Often as though they're trying to make the argument "Wasabi is a mustard and you like mustard, therefore you actually like wasabi!")
After hearing this pedantry one too many times, I had an idea: if wasabi is so important to the sushi experience and wasabi actually is a mustard, maybe my sushi experience would be enhanced with one of the many other mustards I actually enjoy?
So the next time I had sushi, I tried it with various mustards I have on hand. Regular yellow French's mustard, honey mustard, dijon mustard, that mustard in the jar from the Polish deli...
And in each case, it tasted like the mustard. With gentle undertones of the sushi.
Which was delicious, because mustard is delicious! But the flavours didn't enhance each other or harmonize in any particular way that was greater than the sum of its parts.
So I see no need to put mustard (or wasabi) on my sushi, but I wouldn't object if, somehow, my sushi arrived with mustard (but not wasabi) on it.
And if you're thinking "But sushi isn't sushi without wasabi," you can have my share of the wasabi.
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