sushi night...

Last night was sushi night for me and the Boser. We got a fire going in the fireplace, watched new episodes of our favorite NBC Thursday comedies (aka all of them), and pigged out on sushi. It was a pretty excellent evening.

Over the summer, my sister took a sushi-making class and passed her knowledge on to me. Would you like for me to pass the knowledge on to you as well? Okay, okay. Calm down. You don't have to beg.


1. Pick your ingredients.

Regardless of your sushi filling choices, you'll need calrose rice (preferably the Botan brand), rice vinegar, and nori, or seaweed.

You can pick up all of these ingredients in the Asian food section of your grocery store, or, if your grocery store has a sushi cart where you can buy pre-made sushi, they probably have the ingredients on display over there as well.

Then choose what fun stuff you want to go inside. The Boser and I usually opt for vegetarian sushi at home, because the two of us couldn't eat a whole tuna steak in a timely manner. (If you do want to go with tuna, get a sushi-grade tuna steak from the butcher at your grocery store. Only use it for sushi if you buy it still frozen, or if the butcher thawed it that day. Use the same day as thawing.) We did avocado, jalapeno, cream cheese, and cucumber last night.


2. Prepare the rice.

Cook the rice several hours before you plan on making your sushi. You want the rice to have time to cool on the counter at room temperature. Putting it in the fridge will make it hard, though I have refrigerated it in a pinch (aka when I always forget to make it early) and it's not bad.

I usually make four rolls, which is plenty for the Boser and I to share. Here's the recipe for the rice:

Cook 1 1/2 cups of rice in 2 cups water, as directed on the package. When rice is done cooking, add in 1/4 cup of rice vegar 1 1/4 tablespoons of sugar, and a couple dashes of salt.

3. Make your sushi!

Cut up your veggies/meat/etc in thin strips. Lay out a piece of nori on a bamboo sushi mat (you can pick this up at the grocery store for a few bucks) and a pat a thin layer of rice onto the nori, covering all but 1 inch at the top and bottom. You'll want to wet your fingers during this process to keep the rice from sticking to you.

Place your cut up ingredients in the center of the nori/rice, in a line going all the way across the nori. Using your sushi mat, roll the bottom of the nori up over the ingredients. Unroll the mat and keep rerolling a little furthur each time until the whole piece of nori is wrapped up. Use a serrated knife to gently saw through the roll to cut it into pieces.

You just made sushi! Yay! :)

Hugs and loves,

Rachel Elise

P.S. I stocked up on fabric today. Woohoo!