You Know I'm Not Japanese, Right?

With that said, Ima gonna share what we did on Sushi Night last night. As I said, I am not of Japanese decent, I have not trained under a sushi-making-master...I'm just a lady who married an awesome guy and has two crazy kids who all like sushi. And since it's illegal to print your own money and take the whole family out for a sushi fest, we make our own from time to time.

Here's how it went down.

We used Calrose rice*# which is my fave go-to white rice, anyway. It is also short grain and works well for sushi. After you measure out how much you will cook you have to wash and drain the rice like for 127 hours. Maybe an exaggeration. But it takes a while to get all the starch washed off and get the water you drain off to look clear. I then put it in the pot, add the water I need according to the directions and let it soak for 30 minutes. Then I cook it as per instructions. We have a gas stove and this is a tricky MoFo of a situation. But all was well.

I then prepared my veggies and stuff. Toasted some sesame seeds, peeled/seeded/sliced a cucumber, sliced an avocado, shredded the "crab" (really was sushi EVER made with real crab? How did we end up with this LA-version of crab: all white, shiny, dyed-to-simulate and packaged in plastic "crab flavored" stuff?). I also toast the Nori* on my big ole grill pan, which can do two sheets at a time. I cooked the eel*, then put some more unagi sauce* on it and toasted it. Hubs prepared the tuna* by slicing it into appropriate pieces.

Wrap you sushi mat (wait, go get a sushi mat* before you start, you did that right?)...so wrap it in saran unless you enjoy scrubbing gooey, old rice from between bamboo skewers for hours at a time.

Okay, so the rice is cooked, dump it into a hug bowl. Add 3 TB seasoned rice vinegar# per 3 cups of rice. Toss. Put in front of a fan and toss with a paddle every few minutes to cool the rice until it is barely warm. The fan and tossing makes it sticky and room temperature.

Get a bowl of water (for finger and knife dipping), a cutting board, sushi mat, a clean dishtowel and all your ingredients. Now go Google "how-the-hell to make sushi" because from this point on I don't have the time to break it down for you. Sorry. I, personally suck at making rolls, I always overstuff them or they don't stick together or something terrible happens. So my husband rolls them up. I do okay at making the a la carte pieces with little strips of nori wrapped around so that's were I focus my attention.

Oh, let me tell you how my hubs tried to kill me. So I got this tube of wasabi while picking up avocados at the grocery. I usually get a can of wasabi powder* and mix up our own wasabi paste but I couldn't remember if I had any at home and voila there was a ready-made tube on Food Lion's shelf. Easy. Hubs saw it on the table when I unpacked the groceries and tired it straight from the tube and freaked out. Apparently it was a good deal stronger than our usual stuff. So then he smears a teeny-tiny bit on some of the rolls and a la carte pieces and sets them aside for me and himself. Thanks, buddy.

He eats a piece of said "wasabi sushi" and freaks out. Everyone laughs at him getting red and trying to suck air into his mouth to cool it down. Ha ha haaa, silly man. So then I take a bite (assuming that he had added more wasabi to his piece before eating) and HOLY SHITE! Hegot me, he really got me. That stuff was nuclear. All I could do was cry and hit my head and choke out a few expletives. He and the MIL enjoyed laughing at that.

But back to the family sushi. It was all was delicious. And we got full which hardly ever happens in a sushi restaurant. And the kids enjoyed their crazy rolls they made. And BONUS: today I will be having sushi for lunch at work!


*Asian Market supplies
#Regular old grocery store supplies