HOMEMADE SUSHI

I am a big lover of Sushi, and it's something I've been wanting to try making for a very long time. Last weekend, I finally managed to convince Harvey that we should have a go. It took a very long time; Harvey was thoroughly bored by the time we actually managed to make anything edible, but we both agreed that it was 100% worth it.

We decided to keep it fairly simple, and just cut some cucumber, carrot and peppers into thin strips, and cooked some salmon, one fillet in a sweet chilli (bottled) sauce, and one fillet in a Hellman's Japanese Sticky Yakiniku sauce. This is a fairly new product I think, and I really love it, it's so good, especially now that BBQ season has started. We also just opened a tin of Tuna as it's Harvey's favourite. 

Once the rice was cooked, we stirred in some rice wine vinegar (2 cups of uncooked rice, and 4 generous tablespoons of vinegar); apparently you're supposed to use a wooden spoon to stir the rice as the vinegar reacts to metal, but we didn't have a wooden spoon, and used a plastic one instead, which seemed to work just fine. 

After the rice had cooled, it was time for the "fun" to begin. In all honestly, I had a great time, but this is the sort of thing I love. Harvey? Not so much. He rolled the first roll, and that was apparently more than enough. 

My top tips here, are: 

1. Make sure your hands are damp whenever you're handling the rice; it is so much easier to spread the rice layer on top of the Nori sheet if the rice isn't sticking to your fingers instead; and 
2. Don't overfill the sushi roll. You'll actually be surprised how little you need to fill them, and if you overfill them you'll know about it, as the Nori sheet will just split. (I got carried away on the last roll, and this is exactly what happened!)

I'd say about half an hour later, we had 3 maki(?) rolls, and one (attempted) California Roll. I left them to sit for about 5 minutes, and then started cutting them up. If you're going to make sushi, you will need a sharp knife. Also, I'd recommend dampening the knife before every cut, as the rice sticks to the knife otherwise. 

Et voila! You can see from the photos below that we were reasonably successful! Harvey and I both agreed that the sushi was so much nicer than sushi you can buy from the supermarket, which should come as no surprise really, but surprised us nonetheless. We actually made so much sushi, and have since eaten the leftovers as lunch portions (3 portions!) - what you can see in the photo is only half of the sushi rolls we made, and there was a large bowl of rice left too which we turned into a sushi bowl with the remaining ingredients. 

 All things considered, I loved making sushi, and it is something I definitely want to do again. I've got some other ideas along similar lines, so look out for sushi bowls, sushi burritos and sushi burgers on my social media accounts in the future - yes, you heard me, sushi burgers. 

This was only supposed to be a short blog post, but has as usual turned into something much longer. If you've made it this far, well done, and if you have any questions please feel free to leave me a comment. Here's a handy how-to if you wanted to have a go! 

Laura xxx