Skip to main content

Sushi for Beginners

I am incredibly nervous. Sushi is one of the things I never thought I could make at home. But the closest sushi restaurant that passes muster (in fact, the only one in Mumbai) is a couple of hours drive away which means I have to go without sushi for rather a lot of days. So slowly, steadily, I've put all the ingredients together. I have a tube of wasabi, a pack of nori sheets and sushi rice in my pantry. A bottle of dark soy sauce in the fridge. All of which became spring onion and tofu maki rolls for dinner last night.

Wash half cup sushi rice in plenty of water at least 3-4 times until the starch gets washed away. Add 3/4 cup water (or as much as your package say), bring to a boil and simmer for 15 minutes. Turn off the heat but let the rice remain covered for another 10 minutes. In a small pan, heat 2 tbsp vinegar with 3/4 tbsp sugar and a pinch of salt until well blended. Sushi needs rice vinegar but I didn't have any so I used 1 1/2 tbsp white vinegar mixed with 1/2 tbsp water. Pour the warm vinegar on the warm rice and mix well.

My nori sheets were pre-toasted, but toast yours if they aren't. Place on a mat (okay, a thick napkin since I didn't have the mat) shiny side down. Spread rice all over the nori sheet leaving 1/2 inch at top and bottom free. Arrange spring onions and tofu slices on top of rice at one end of nori sheet. Dot with wasabi and carefully make a roll. Since the rice is warm, the roll will seal automatically.

Cut in 6 slices and serve with dark soy sauce and wasabi for dipping. Pickled ginger is the other typical accompainment, but I am not a big fan so I left it out.

The verdict : I used way too much rice, which gave me plump rolls and had my nori sheets close to tearing. But I loved it. For isn't rice the best part of sushi (in fact, vinegared rice IS sushi. Not raw fish, that's sashimi). But still, the rolls were not perfect. Which means I need to work on it; make this more often. Never heard a better excuse to eat sushi!

And with all this rice, I think sushi makes an apt entry for Srivalli's Rice Mela as well.

Comments

CurryLeaf said…
Lovely dear,Bravo you cooked Japanes,Pass it over here as well.Lovely
Sunshinemom said…
It gives me jitters to try this! Kudos to you for making them! Can you let me know where you found the nori sheets, sushi rice and wasabi? I suppose you will say Inox or something, and I will say OMG!!
Anonymous said…
I got them all from the same place. It's Godrej Nature Basket at Lokhandwala.
Bharti said…
Good for you....looks pretty good.
I've made Sushi a couple of times but haven't really developed a taste for it :-(. I know I'm weird.
Srivalli said…
oh...reading gets me nervous...great try simran!
Anonymous said…
To make a better roll, spread a plastic wrap(used for covering left over food) on the mat and pour some soya on it and then place the nori. This way you can get a better and firmer roll.

Popular posts from this blog

I've found my perfect cookie

It's a bite sized cookie, with flavors of a pie, shape of a croissant and a pretty, pretty name. It's Rugelach. I first heard of this cookie when it became the baking pick for Tuesdays with Dorrie a couple of months back. The looks, the concept - everything was fascinating. And I've dreamed of making this cookie ever since. I ditched hundreds of recipes floating around and went straight to the master. It's Dorie Greenspan's recipe that I used, and ain't I glad I got it so perfect the very first time. So what's rugelach? It's cream-cheese pastry dough, rolled then cut into wedges, spread with jam and sugar and fillings of choice, rolled into crescents and baked. First the dough. Dorie did it in her processor, but I just went and did it by hand. Put 100 gms cream cheese and 100 gms butter out of the fridge until they were soft but still cold. Added both to a cup of plain flour (I omitted the salt because I use salted butter). Rubbed the flour and but

Mystery Fruit

This only happened a few times every year, just when the rainy season kicked in. A street hawker will come by, straw basket on head. He will yell "kaul chapni" and I will run out to buy a bundle of these. Stuck together like flowers, they looked like a bouquet. Every hole contains a little fruit. You break out the package, peel the tiny fruit that pops out and eat it. Done slowly, it can take you an hour to eat an head. Or did, when I was about 12 years old. That was the last time I saw this fruit. I've never seen it again, didn't even know what it was called or where it came from. Three weeks back, Vikram Doctor wrote about a store in Khar that sells Sindhi foods. He described this fruit and I knew it came from my vivid childhood memories. And finally, I knew we were talking about lotus fruit. Now talk about coincidences. Last weekend, I was passing by a lane in Bandra and for the first time in many, many years I saw the straw basket filled with my mytery fru

Of Brun and Bun Maska

There is more to Bombay's breads than the pao that goes into pao bhaji and vada pao. There's Brun. and there's bun. We will get there. First, you have to get to know the city's Parsis. And Iranis, who are also Zoroastrians, but came to city a little later, in the late 19th or early 20th century. And when they came, they brought with them these little cafes that dot the city. I am no expert on Irani chai cafes. And I can't tell you whether Yazdani Bakery will provide you the best experience or Kyani's. But I can tell you a few things you need to ignore when you get there. Appearances don't matter; so ignore the fact that the marble/glass top tables and the wooden chairs look a bit dilapidated. Also ignore the rundown look the place sports. Instead, get yourself settled. And order a bun muska. This one's familiar to you as a first cousin of the soft hamburger bun. It's similar, but just a tad bit sweeter. Maska, of course, is the generous dollop o