Bonsai inspiration
Our new home is very modern…. it’s architecture is reminiscent of Frank Lloyd Wright. We’ve abandoned all our “old world” traditional furniture from our former home and turned in a more zen, Asian inpsired decor direction. To keep with the theme, we’ve purchased two bonsai trees. We bought one a few weeks ago at TLC and the other we picked up at the Oklahoma City Home and Garden Show yesterday.
That pretty little tea tree bonsai inspired us to get adventurous and try our hand at making homemade sushi for dinner. I’m a pretty experienced cook and not afraid to try new recipes and to invent my own. So, Andy, Amber and I headed out to “Chinatown,” the Asian market. What an experience! From the moment you park outside the store, you feel like you’re in another country. The sights, smells and sounds are so foreign, we couldn’t help but just giggle at everything. It was cool.
We were on the hunt for items for our sushi adventure. We purchased short grain rice, Nori (paper thin seaweed in which you roll sushi) bamboo mats for rolling, cute little dishes for dipping soy sauce (29 cents each!), a huge stainless steel cleaver for cutting the sushi rolls (only $10.99–a great deal for a killer knife), Miso soup mix, a beautiful little tea set and several varieties of tea.
About an hour and $90 later, we giddily headed out of the market laden with bags full of random Asian items. We headed to Wal Mart for a few other items we would need–tempura shrimp, avocado, cucumber, red bell peppers, cream cheese, wasabi…
Back home, it was time to dive in.
First step: rinse 2 cups short grain rice several times until the water runs clear. You have to use short or medium grain rice to acheive the required level of sticky. Don’t even bother trying Minute Rice–your rolls will fall apart.
Boil 2 cups of water and add the rice. Turn the burner way down and cover the pan to let the rice steam up. Check it periodically, tasting for texture and take the rice off the burner as soon as it’s soft enough.
Next, in a small sauce pan heat 3 tablespoons of rice vinegar with 2 tablespoons sugar and 2 teaspoons salt (you can vary those amounts to taste) until the salt and sugar dissolve.
Add the vinegar mixture to the rice and mix it in thoroughly, taking care not to break the tender rice grains. Then, spread the rice on a large plate to let it cool down. Don’t refrigerate the rice, it will become dry and hard.
While the rice cools, chop up your veggies and prep whatever meat you’ll use. We decided to stay safe and simple for our first foray into sushi and opted for tempura shrimp, cooked tilapia, cucumber, avocado, red bell peppers abd cream cheese.
Lay out your bamboo mats and cover each with a piece of plastic wrap. Then, lay a piece of Nori over the plastic wrap.
When the rice cools, spread a thin layer of rice on the Nori using your hands. If you wet your hands, it will be much easier to spread the rice as it is very sticky.
If you want the rice to be on the outside of your sushi roll, California style I guess, place another piece of plastic wrap over the layer of rice and carefully flip the Nori and rice over so the rice layer is on the bottom. Remove the layer of plastic wrap that is now on top.
Now is the fun part: add your filling along the center of the Nori. We had enough rice to make three large rolls. In one, we used shrimp, avocado and cucumbers. On the second, we used tilapia, bell peppers and cream cheese. The third was shrimp, cream cheese and avocado.
Now, roll. Hold the filling in place with your fingers and bring the end closest to you up with your thumbs. Tightly tuck the end over the filling, making sure the plastic wrap and bamboo mat don’t get rolled in. Once you’ve got the end tucked in it’s pretty simple to continue the roll. Just make sure you’re compressing the roll tightly enough to stick together and be compact without squishing the ingredients out the ends.
You can roll your sushi rolls in roe or sesame seeds to coat the outside. We left our rolls naked:)
Now, you’re ready to pull out that giant cleaver and slice your rolls. I found that this is the hardest part and demands a little technique. WET your fingers and the cleaver between each slice or every other slice. The wet cleaver will glide through the sticky rice and wet fingers will keep you from sticking to the rolls. Use a slight sawing action to ease through the Nori.
Well, that’s about it. I am sure there are some different techniques out there but this one worked for us! Our first rolls were a little big because we used too much rice but=they turned out beautiful and delicious.
Happy rolling!
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