You'd thing having people roll their own sushi would take a lot of the work out the preparation. Well, think again! My sister had to go through lots of chopping, skewering, cooking and saucing! The prep time is as long if not longer than any fancy meal. She made sure we had every thing imaginable available to stuff into our sushi rolls and boy did we take advantage of it.
Here's a list of all of what was was available to us: (I may have missed a few)
- sushi-grade raw tuna
- sushi-grade raw salmon
- smoked salmon
- cooked shrimp
- tempura fried shrimp
- scallops
- sweet potatoes
- shitake mushrooms
- daikon
- cucumber
- lettuce
- mango
- green onions
- red bell pepper
- spicy mayo
- sesame seeds (black and roasted)
- omelet
- simile crab (pollock)
- sesame dressing
- rice crispy (great tempura substitute if you're press for time)
- deep fried tofu
- cream cheese
And of course we had access to plenty of sticky rice and seaweed wrap with the usual soya sauce, wasabi and pickled ginger.
Rolling sushi is surprising quite easy if you have sushi rolling mats. You place the seaweed sheet on the mat and flatten rice in a thin layer upon it, leaving around an inch of rice-free space along the top and bottom. Then you put any ingredient combination that takes your fancy (without overstuffing it). Using rice vinegar, you lightly wet the edges of the seaweed and roll it tightly with the help of the mat. Once that's done, the roll is sliced and you're left with surprisingly professional looking sushi.
Needless to say, with 7 people rolling sushi we had many different wonderful variations. It's a great way to get your guests to use their creativity and learn something new at the same time. You could actually see people's personalities pop up in their sushi, everything from the neat to the adventurous. Lucy, we all appreciate the effort, money and time that went into this and hopefully can do it again!
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