sushi!

The finished product!



Sometime in March I discovered how great sushi was, after spending 16ish years thinking it was vile and disgusting. But since I'm me I wasn't content just eating the stuff other people made, especially since the nearest place to buy sushi isn't exactly high-end. So at my request my lovely mum bought me a book on beginner sushi making and last Wednesday, April 14th 2010, I set about trying to make it for the first time.


my bible; if you will! I advise this book for anyone who want to learn to make sushi. All the instructions made perfect sense, to me anyway.



first, you have to soak the rice. If I'd had enough time you're supposed to wash/rinse it about 7 times and then let it sit for an hour, but instead I did it the 'fast way'; just letting it sit for 15 minutes with one rinse/water change 5 minutes is.



After it's been cooked & had cooled a bit you mix a mixture of rice vinegar, sugar & salt into it.
the mixture

and the rice



here are my ingredients!
L-R: king crab (long & short), smoked salmon (long & short), bell pepper & cucumber. With different crab meat in the plastic container behind.


close up of the crab




now came the fun part; actually rolling it! Apparently it's not that easy to find a sushi mat here. a lot of people didn't even seem to know what it was supposed to look like, let alone if they carried it. So instead of putting a rain check on my sushi-fest I cut off part of a bamboo table runner and used duct-tape to deal with the end. Since I've never used a real mat I don't know how different it would be but this worked very well.
Since the rice is so ridiculously sticky, you have to cover your hands in rice vinegar before touching it, which caused much hilarity for my family since my brother and I both hate the smell of vinegar.

The green stuff I'm putting it on is nori (or dried seaweed)



AHHH! I made sushi, real delicious sushi! I am so happy with how it turned out. I figure that if this is my first try, I can get alright at it in not too long.




After I finished making the rolls, I left them to sit while I made the smaller, flatter ones. Unfortunately I can't remember what their actual name is.





after that, I just cut up the rolls & put out the soy sauce!