Sushi!

My friend Jennifer told me a long time ago that I should try making sushi. She sent me her recipe for it, and I had good intentions of doing so. Now, her cookbook is out and I still hadn't made sushi....along with that, someone on the Patrick's Point campout, a fellow vegetarian, made sushi while camping! And she said to me in astonishment, "you've never made sushi???" So, I knew I had to try it someday. Jennifer had told me it was easy, but I didn't really believe her. :-) Now I know it's easy, though just a tad time-consuming....in the same way as it's time-consuming to cook dried beans, it just takes a while to cook. Well worth the effort, though!

Anyway, I'm not going to try to duplicate her recipe here. It's a process that needs some attention, and Jennifer explains it all in her book. Sadly, I'm not finding a recipe on her website for sushi, but if you like sushi it's well worth the price of the book just for this recipe. (Plus you get all the rest of the recipes included!)

So, in the picture above you see sushi, in the top middle. The fillings I used were avocado slices, grated carrot and fried tofu strips. Clockwise, there's pickled ginger which was recommended with the sushi and it has a very interesting flavor. Next is edamame which you can buy in frozen packages--it just needs a quick boil and then you can pop the beans out into your mouth. Then there is a tiny bit of wasabi, which is spicy enough that you don't need any more than that! I put a tiny dab on my plate and just barely touched the sushi to it before dipping it in soy sauce, which is what's in the bottle and what the empty ramekins are for. Paul liked the wasabi in great smears, though, and I had to mix up extra for him.

I bought the tools I'd need at Uwajimaya. If you live in the Northwest you can get everything you need there. The only thing I'd do differently is that I bought a kit that included the wooden tub for mixing and cooling the rice in, along with three wooden rice paddles and a bamboo mat. Though I already had a mat, the extra one did come in handy, as Hibi helped me roll sushi. The paddles, however, were too small and after much tossing and cooling of rice my hands were ready to call it quits. Before I make sushi again I will buy longer-handled paddles.