From the editor.

It was almost two years ago when I confided in this column about my frightful first experience eating sushi. As the guest of some serious sushi eaters, I had literally bitten off more than I could chew in a seafood-stuffed roll topped with eel sauce. At the time, I thought I was too scarred by the experience to ever dare attempt the exotic culinary genre again.

But not long after writing those words, a strange thing happened. Inexplicably, I felt an urge to give sushi another try, but without the spotlight that came with being a first-time sushi eater among a table full of pros. With the pressure off, I grew to truly enjoy sushi, and in the process I discovered a few secrets that can make the dining experience a lot less intimidating:

1. It's okay to stick with familiar fillings. There's no need to get fancy and eat a roll covered with roe (fish eggs) or topped with eel sauce if you're not ready for that. There are plenty of choices on modern Japanese menus that aren't so different from traditional Southern favorites, such as fried shrimp or crab, or you can go vegetarian with asparagus or avocado rolls.

2. You don't have to use chopsticks. It is perfectly acceptable to pick up the pieces with your hands if you aren't skilled at maneuvering two wooden spears. This can also help avoid the embarrassment of a lap doused in soy sauce.

3. It isn't necessary to eat the entire piece in one bite. Particularly with specialty rolls, which contain a larger number of ingredients and can therefore be very wide, go ahead and carefully bite off half at a time, and you'll be able to more easily enjoy the combination of flavors.

In this issue, we profile a young Starkville native whose mission is to make sushi even more accessible to timid novices. After training at the prestigious California Sushi Academy, Marisa Baggett is one of the country's only African-American female sushi chefs and is highly skilled in the Asian artform. But it is her flair for inventing unusual sushi masterpieces, such as crawfish rolls with pickled okra and crab-filled rolls topped with thinly sliced fruit, that has made her a standout in this hard-to-break-into field.

Even people who wouldn't dream of trying raw fish are embracing her creations, so Marisa is now stepping out of the restaurant kitchen to offer private sushi parties and classes. "I often find that once people find something they can trust and learn what sushi truly is, they are more likely to expand their sushi horizons," she says. If you're ready to try something new, you can even follow Marisa's step-by-step recipes for preparing sushi at home; they accompany our article on the chef, "On a Roll," beginning on page 82.

Soon, even those whose strongest exposure to Japanese culture came from a 1980s Styx song will be saying "domo arigato"--thank you very much--for the introduction to a wonderful new cuisine.