Sushi for Enthusiastic Beginners

Welcome to our blog! I so enjoy reading others' blogs (and looking at pictures!!), I've decided to hop on the bandwagon.

Jacob and I have been married just a short 10 months (it's gone fast!), and when I think about our life together, I realize that it mostly feels like a series of experiments - some small, some big, mostly fun,  sometimes a little scary, but the cool part is that we figure stuff our together. 

One of the best parts of our life - and I don't feel that I'm overstating this - is cooking and eating food. We're always taking on news recipes and trying to see how many meal component we can make from scratch. I would not call us food snobs - because we will happily heat up a frozen pizza or pig out on Wegman's frozen buffalo wings - but it feels so good to make something with your hands and to know exactly what you're eating. And I've discovered a lot of new foods that I like (no shock - the list of food I don't like is dwindling, and brussel spouts just got knocked off it).

After taking a sushi class through California Rollin', we felt prepared to attempt a Sushi night in our own home - plus they gave us the little rolling mats, so we were well equipped. Jacob went to a Japanese market in Rochester and picked up Nori (roasted seaweed sheets),  crab sticks (or fish sticks with a tiny bit of crab - lets be reali$tic), butterfly shrimp and wasabi powder. The rest of the ingredients we had at home...

White rice, cucumbers, avocado and mayo (yeah, California Rolls have a fair amount of mayo in them, as it turns out!). We also added mangoes, hummus, and and bean dip to our palette. And wine. Duh.

Good trick - put the rolling mat in a large ziploc - works just as well and it won't get dirty. You start with the shiny side of the nori up, get some mayo on your fingers and spread the hot rice evenly over the sheet - it is easier to work with hot rice, but it also burns your fingers. You just have to want it bad enough to push through the pain. Sprinkle with sesame or poppy seeds (or crunchy onion bits...or bacon...always bacon if you have it). Now, flip the whole thing over, spread some mayo down the center and add the goods!

I didn't get a great picture of the rolling process - something about having mayo and avocado all over my hands...but ideally you get a roll that closes up and then you use the sharpest knife you have to slice it up. That was the hardest part for us - a few of the rolls ended up with everything shooting out the sides. So I just ate those and then photographed the pretty ones.

Food Porn.

In an effort to round out the theme night, we watched Anthony Bourdain's  No Reservations: Japan. And I put chopsticks in my hair. And I made Jacob put on his Vietnamese bathrobe - he was thrilled.*

He's got mad chopstick skills.

We ate our rolls as we went along, and once we were stuffed we made a few more. The key to keeping the rolls fresh enough to eat the next day is wrapping each one in plastic wrap - otherwise the rice will dry out and it won't be nearly as good.

Experiment: Sushi

Hypothesis: If we try to make sushi, then we will make such good sushi and so much sushi that we will make ourselves almost sick, and then we will brag about it on a new blog.

Conclusion: Yup.

*He was not thrilled and told me I was being culturally insensitive but I was having none of it. Family theme dinner night is family theme dinner night.

No scientific methods was harmed in the making of this blog.