Sushi night

Can I just say that I love sushi? If there were one food I could take with me to a desert island, that food would be sushi. I have never met a piece of sushi I didn't like (except maybe some not-so-fresh uni). But with three guys around the house, it is prohibitively expensive to go out and order up all the sushi they can eat.

Enter the local Asian market. :)

In a previous failed attempt, I found the most important part of good sushi to be the rice. It needs to be short grain sushi rice, and it needs to be rinsed. Do not try to substitute rice. Trust me on this.

I found a sushi rice recipe on the back of the seaweed package and it was perfect. 3 cups of rice, rinsed, to 3 cups of water. I steamed the rice in our fuzzy logic rice cooker. When the rice is done, remove it to cool at least 20 minutes. I put it in a shallow oval dish. Boil together 1/3 cup rice vinegar, 1 tsp salt and 1 T sugar until the salt and sugar are dissolved. Pour over rice and mix gently until the liquid is distributed evenly. Let cool to room temperature.

Prepare all the ingredients before you start to put the sushi together. Here I have shrimp (bought prepared and frozen), cucumber, pickled daikon, avocado, fake crab, and some spring mix to make up for the fact that shiso was not in season. I also had tobiko (flying fish roe) and pickled plums (not pictured). Here's where I warn you that I don't officially know how to make sushi, I have just spent some serious time sitting at the sushi bar watching it be made. Also? I stay away from raw. I leave that to the real sushi chefs. :)

First up: rolls. Lay the seaweed out on top of a piece of saran wrap on the bamboo sushi mat. Have a small bowl of rice vinegar standing by. You'll want to wet your hands with it so that the rice won't stick as much.

The larger rolls take a whole sheet; the smaller rolls take half a sheet. Here is what the rice will look like when it is patted out (by hand) on the seaweed.

Add your ingredients down the middle. The sesame seeds are a delicious addition.

This is the tricky part. You're going to roll the mat over while trying not to catch the saran wrap and the mat inside the roll. It may take a little practice.

This is how it will look halfway through. You'll want to pack it down tight and press it into shape. Peel off the mat and the saran wrap and roll it over until the seam is on the bottom.

It will look like the picture below.

While it's in the mat, you'll want to pack it so that it's sort of square-ish. Don't worry about the rice getting mushy from being packed too hard. It will stand up to lots of pressure, and you need that pressure to make the roll stick together properly for cutting.

Finished rolls ready for cutting.

You'll want to use a super sharp knife to cut them, and it's helpful to wash it between rolls to get the sticky rice starch off.

I also made some nigiri sushi (the rolls are maki sushi).

Before shaping the rice, make sure to coat your hands with rice vinegar.

I put little seaweed strips around the rice and stuck them together with a piece of rice.

Then they got filled with tobiko. YUM!

Shrimp came next. I put a little wasabi on the underside. I love wasabi.

Mmmmmmmmmmmm.

All cut and ready for eating!

Everyone was stuffed. :)