Sushi 101

Ok, making sushi rolls is fun, and there is NO raw fish requirement. (Bleahhh. )

These are the rolls Suzy and I made last week. As you can see we have just about enough for 3 people since the normal serving size for lunch is about 6 or 8 little slices.

Here's a brief overview(brief being taken in the context of everything I write, of course...) :

1. Buy tons of ingredients. (Say to your sister "I have the rice and the paper, some water chestnuts, and some baby carrotts, so just get a couple of things for us to finish them" and if your sister is ME, she will go to the market hungry and buy mango, snow peas, canned baby corn, cooked crabmeat & shrimp, sesame seeds, and a cucumber. Fortune cookies* are a nice way to round this all out if you're not worried about a Chinese vs. Japanese food fight in your shopping cart. Also buy Mike's Hard Lemonade or even better, a Mike's sampler which includes hard berry, hard lime, and a cranberry variety I didn't get around to trying at our family picnic)

2. The nori paper is seaweed but it doesn't taste nasty so don't whine about it. You don't need to soak it, just open up the bag and use the sheets as they are. You need sushi rice, which is sticky and globs together. Start the rice cooking before you slice up your ingredients and DON'T OPEN THE POT WHILE IT'S COOKING. It's shy. We made two cups of rice and used it all to make the rolls above. We could have cooled it a little bit longer but... not a big deal.

3. Slice up a good handful of everything that you want to use as fillers. Make little matchstick size pieces of any of the veggies that are crunchy, and just chop the seafood into small strips or tiny chunks. I did this while the rice was cooking and sort of arranged it all on the cutting board. (Wanna-be TV-chef....)

4. You don't need a bamboo mat to roll up the nori rolls. Wet the counter a little bit and smooth out an 8x10 piece of saran wrap (or if it's still sticky from slushing 3 Mike's Hard Lemonades all at once, all the better...)

5. Put a piece of nori on the saran wrap, then wet your hands frequently and pat some rice into a very thin layer covering all but about 1" of the paper (the "top" edge... so that when you close the roll it sticks to itself)

6. At the "bottom edge" (closest to you) just put a band of whatever filling you want, about 1" wide. Be creative but don't try to put everything in all at once. Maybe one seafood and two veggies.

7. Then just roll... squeeze the ingredients and rice together, roll a little bit at a time, and don't be an ass and get the saran wrap all tangled up in the roll. Don't let the ingredients smush out the ends.

When it's completely rolled, you can sort of twist the saran wrap ends to hold it together, and store the sushi in the fridge for a while while you have more hard lemonade. Or you could make these in the morning for a party later that evening and spoil all of your friends. We did everything here in about an hour. Maybe a little longer. (Not sure, see frequent Mike's lemonade references.)

8. Slice and serve with soy sauce (or duck sauce, but soy is more traditional). You can be creative and arrange the slices into little flowers and stuff, like on the nori package.

Another variation is to put rice down on the saran wrap first, then the seaweed paper, then the ingredients. Before you slice this one, roll it in sesame seeds. Don't cake them completely, but put enough on so that each slice will have some.

There were two things I didn't bother buying that night: Wasabi is green mush, and it's Japanese horseradish (be afraid... or make some, if you like VERY spicy stuff ) and pickled ginger slices, which make a nice garnish.

You can also put caviar on top - I didn't really see that in the supermarket :::cough::: but I recommend it. Caviar doesn't taste fishy. It sort of pops in your mouth and highlights the other flavors somehow.

This is SO easy, and it's fun to do. You'll be amazed at how good these are. Except for the lemonade, everything is good for you!!


*always read your fortune out loud, and then say "...in bed." It's amazing how much more optimistic the fortune becomes.