If you haven't tried sushi by now, you just haven't lived. As any sushi lover will tell you, it's amazing - and not just poisson cru with a little rice.There may be sushi restaurants in Cannes, Monaco and Nice but why not go for perfection and maki your own?

Sushi actually has a double meaning in Japanese, depending on how it is written. The Chinese characters (which the Japanese use in their writing) are made up of two parts: tasty and fish. Written another way, it can mean vinegar (su) and rice (shi). Legend has it that in the Edo period, sushi was introduced by a Japanese merchant to get his protein and carbohydrates in one go, not unlike how the Earl of Sandwich invented that quintessential snack of meat between two slices of bread.

Today, traditional sushi is actually a festive food, eaten by families celebrating an auspicious occasion such as an engagement or birthday. In Japan, sushi served conveyer-belt style is considered the cheap and easy alternative to "real" sushi which definitely has a snob-factor about it. Needless to say, the good stuff also breaks the bank. A recent visit to my father's neighbourhood sushi joint in downtown (old) Tokyo cost 120 euros for the two of us. And we had only beer with it!

Contrary to Western expectations, sushi bar regulars in Japan (mostly businessmen) eat the fishy morsels with their hands, and not chopsticks, and never douse their sushi with soy-sauce. Just a touch of the soy will do, and usually there is enough wasabi (that wonderful nasal-clearing green horseradish-type mustard) in the sushi to make it taste just right. Tamago, or sweetened egg omelette, is eaten either with or without rice (but never with wasabi) and usually at the end of the meal, in place of dessert.

There are several establishments (but not many) on the Riviera that serve sushi. Sushi Kan in Cannes, and My Sushi in Nice are two of my preferred local sushi eateries, but a sushi snob would argue that real sushi can be made only by a Japanese chef and not another national. Most people though, can't tell the difference.

But why do we never see women making sushi behind an authentic Japanese sushi bar? The reason might surprise you. According to a Japanese sushi chef I spoke to in Osaka, it's because "women's hands are too warm." And apparently this is common knowledge in the sushi-making world of Japan. The higher temperature might tamper with the freshness of the raw fish, after all (I can hear the "Oh, come on!" reactions by my assertive feminist friends). But Japanese housewives, or okusan in Japanese (literally back-person, or person that belongs in the back of the house cleaning and cooking), make onigiri (triangle-shaped rice balls with cooked filling) and vegetable maki-sushi for their children to take to school almost every day. This style of sushi, however, I call Okusan-style sushi, and it is one that I have gleefully mastered and improved upon, in addition to making the nigiri (literally, formed by hand and made with raw fish or egg) style, over my 25 years of practising this culinary art. As a hobby, I teach this style in my sushi classes here on the Riviera.

Nothing beats that feeling of smugness when your dinner guests "Ooh," "Ahh," and "Wooow" over your own, home-made sushi. But you have to know how to make it taste as good as it looks. The most important part of making sushi is the rice. Get the rice wrong and you can forget the whole thing. I once made the huge mistake of overcooking the rice (by leaving it in the rice cooker for too long) and ended up tossing it to the dogs, as the worst thing you can do for sushi is to make the rice too sticky and mushy. For perfect sushi rice, you need a rice cooker. You cook the rice (1 part to 1.5 times the water) and after it's done, steam it for 15 minutes. The not-too-hot rice then needs to be seasoned with just the right amount of rice vinegar, salt, and sugar. A trick is to use the ready-made sushi vinegar available in jars at Asian markets.

Sushi can be made with almost anything. For maki-sushi I love using fillings like smoked salmon or mackerel, grilled teriyaki, asparagus spears and steamed spinach, for example - but try not to get into an argument about that with a traditional sushi chef who has had over 20 years of experience and training. Outside of Japan, a few of these types can be found in sushi bars in California. Aki-san, the master chef I worked with for three years in the 80s and who still has his sushi bar (no tables) in Berkeley, California, called Sushi-Sho, is and always was, stubbornly traditional and would force a cough at the request of a "tiger roll" or "spicy tuna maki." The most new-wave he ever felt obliged enough to take his life's work to was the California roll, a maki made with fresh avocado and real crab meat (best freshly steamed) but first introduced on the West coast of America as avocado was never native to Japan. These days in the more trendy sushi-serving establishments of the world, the California roll is made "inside-out" with the rice on the outside and covered in orange flying fish roe or dark roasted sesame seeds. The cheaper establishments (and supermarkets) will make the roll with surimi (artificial crab meat made with processed fish) but it doesn't taste the same and any foodie would know the difference.

The way to learn how to make the best sushi is by trying as much of the good stuff as possible. I know I make it well after many, many years of eating so much at places like Tsukiji market in Tokyo, all the fantastic nouvelle-Japanese cuisine spots in avant-garde California and my all-time favourite Japanese restaurant, Nobu in London. We may not be blessed with the greatest Japanese fare on the Riviera but there are a lot of cheap, fantastic and fresh ingredients available to make it with and if the restaurant choices are not enough for you, then why not learn to make it at home?

Susana Iwase Hanson will begin teaching sushi classes again this summer. Check the events calendar on FR2DAY or send an email to SUSANA for more information.