Food Day Friday: sushi

Over a month ago, we made sushi. It was fabulously easy, a wonderful creative process and incredibly tasty. And I'm finally getting around to telling you about it.

We started out at about.com in the Traditional Japanese food section.

From there we went shopping. The main basic have to have stables are nori (seaweed wraps), sushi rice, and the bamboo mat to make the rolls with. Plus all the fillings (and condiments). We used (cooked) shrimp, raw salmon and raw crab as our meats. and avocado, cucumber, green apple, toasted sesame seeds and cream cheese as the other fillings. Our condiments were spicy mustard, plum sauce, wasabi paste, pickled ginger and soy sauce. We got everything at Whole Foods, Publix and World Market.

The only actual recipe in this post is the sushi rice recipe:

I cooked the rice (2 cups) per the instructions on the bag and then added

1/3 cup of rice vinegar with 3 tablespoons of sugar and 1 teaspoon of salt dissolved in it.

This is the rolling mat, the seaweed wrap, rice, crab, cream cheese and green apple.

I LOVED the way the cream cheese and apple complimented the crab. and the crunch of the apple was fabulous.

rolling the roll. I won the roller of the night award. Making a tight and securely sealed roll was pretty easy for me. Husband won the creativity award. As He came up with most of the tasty combinations. Husband also was the one who cut the rolls into pieces and he did great at that.

This was actually the first one I made. (notice the almost too much rice).

It's cucumber and spicy shrimp. Husband used a chili sauce we use on egg rolls to cook the shrimp in and it was perfect. Plus the coolness of the cucumber was a good balance to the spice.

I also added sesame seeds to this one before I rolled it.

Not pictured is a salmon/cucumber/pickled ginger roll Husband made and one other that I can't really remember. We each did two different kinds. (and I made a duplicate shrimp/cucumber roll because I liked it so much)

I bought those chop sticks from World Market specifically because they matched the dishes.

Husband chose to use his beige sticks he's had for years and years.

The was the whole spread.

we've since bought a divided sampler dish at World Market so all the condiments are in one place and not in various dishes all over the table. It makes for a less cluttered table.

We seriously loved this so much that we made rolls the NEXT night too. (well, that AND we had enough left overs for more) The rolls looked neater on night two!

It really is incredibly easy. Deciding combinations and waiting on the rice to cook took the longest!

Soon we'll try the inside out rolls, where the rice is on the outside. That will be a good learning experience.