Sushi!

Usually when I bother to make sushi it's a big production - I'm having people over, or going to a potluck or something, and I make 4 cups of rice and end up doing something like 20 rolls. It almost always involves a shopping trip, because if I'm going to all that trouble, gosh darn it, it will have exactly everything I want in it. I'm usually not motivated to just make a couple rolls for myself, but I'd been craving it for a long time so it finally happened.

Unfortunately it happened on a Saturday, when I was almost out of vegetables (my favorite farmers market here is on Sunday - weird, right?). But I had an avocado, and that's really the only thing I insist on having before I'll make sushi. Usually I'll want some tofu and carrots, but didn't have either and it was just fine. Actually it was super.



I also didn't have sushi rice, but I did have arborio. I've used sushi rice to make risotto before and it worked great, so I figured the reverse was probably true, and it definitely is. I recommend it to everyone who has limited cupboard space and can't just go keeping all kinds of different short grain rice varieties laying around all the time.

I won't go into a whole tutorial on sushi rolling, I'll just say (1) wet your fingers before you spread out the rice, because it's sticky, (2) spread it all the way to the sides of the nori but not all the way to the top or bottom, (3) put the filling in a line, don't cover all of the rice, and (4) look up a real tutorial if you haven't rolled sushi before, so you don't squeeze all your vegetables out or otherwise end up with a big mess.



I didn't have many vegetables but I did have kale, and I sauteed it with a lot of garlic and ginger, then seasoned it with sesame oil, rice vinegar, and soy sauce. One roll was just avocado and vegenaise (trust me, it's good); the other two were avocado and kale and yes, more vegenaise. I have it on good authority that in Japan apparently they put mayonnaise in almost all the sushi, so I didn't make it up. I just made it better.

The rice: I love the recipe I use; 4 C water, 3.5 C rice, cook 15 min, then leave on the stove with the heat off 15 more. Mix then add 5 T rice vinegar, 5 T sugar, 4 t salt.

Oh, and I add a little rice vinegar, garlic, sesame oil, and ginger to my soy sauce. It's worth the trouble.



Sushi is worth the trouble in general. Next time maybe I'll bother to make some with rice on the outside. We'll see.