Poor Man's Sushi

When my friend Josh left Israel's shores back in April, he very kindly left me two bags of sushi rice and they've been sitting on my kitchen shelf ever since. Now let's face it; there isn't much you can do with sushi rice except the obvious: make sushi, right? So it was only really a matter of time before I tried my hand at making the cuisine that I so obsessively consumed in the land of the rising sun. Well scoffing the stuff is one thing, and preparing it is a completely different matter.

Seeing as it is that i'm on unemployment benefit - yes, I got my first payment for June, isn't it great? - and this was my first attempt at making sushi, I opted for the much cheaper canned tuna filling as opposed to the considerably dearer fresh fish. The rest of the ingredients, albeit numerous, can be considered a long term culinary investment, as, after all with 2 kilos of rice I'll be eating sushi for a month or two.

At the first step of the process, I already ran into problems. The instructions at the back of the packed of rice stated 1 cup of rice to 11/4 - 11/2 cups of water. Maybe I was missing something but I didn't have a clue what the stated quantities of water actually means. Well, what's the internet for? Unfortunately most of the recipes I found gave the rice in grams and the amount of water in fluid ounces. Of course, the recipe I chose which stated rice:water as 1:1 by volume didn't do the job and after adding extra water to the uncooked rice I concluded that 1:1.5 is the correct ratio; sometimes you have to learn the hard way.

The rest of the process went quite smoothly, apart from making my first roll while the rice was still warm - not recommended - and overfilling a couple of the rolls with too much of one thing or another. In the end, i became quite the expert and there's definitely potential there for a career alternative if the whole computing thing doesn't work out. Just look at the beautiful results:

(Photographic consultant: Iris Chvaicer)

And friends, my blog wouldn't complete without attempting to educate you with an interesting fact about sushi. Those of you who read my Japan blog might recall that I mentioned the mischievious creatures called "Kappas" that are said to live in the Tono Valley and look something like this little fellow:

Please note that this Kappa is holding a cucumber, his favourite food. The sushi lovers amongst you who pay attention to the Japanese names of the different sushi, might recall that "Kappa Maki" is a cucumber roll, that's right, named after these little critters. There's an interesting fact to impress your friends with while you're stuffing your faces with Japan's favourite export.