Sorry for my relatively long absence. I've been working way too much lately. But, this long weekend I took off. I didn't do a lick of work for three days and it was magnificent. I hope you got a little time off too. I'm going to share some photos from each day. One post at a time.
Day One
Saturday was, of course, Valentine's Day. Not a big holiday in my book. But, we had reason to celebrate this year because Matt was home with me, rather than on the road as in years past.
On a whim, I decided to make him sushi for dinner, since it's his favorite. I've never made sushi before. I've planned to. I'd even bought a sushi mat (which we seem to have lost in summer pack/unpack episode).
For a first-timer, I was overly ambitious. But it was Valentine's Day, so it seemed like a good time to go overboard.
We made California rolls (crab, cucumber, carrot, avocado), Philadelphia rolls (smoked salmon, cream cheese, cucumber), and green bean tempura rolls. It was probably too many fixings to deal with for a first try, but it all worked out and we had a fun time. I cut up all the stuff, then fried up green beans, sweet potato, and shrimp in tempura batter.
Meanwhile, Matt rolled up the maki. Without a sushi mat!
And they turned out lovely.
We agreed our suski (I mean sushi! - I've typed suski like 5 times, which must be the Pole in me coming out!) was almost as good as restaurant sushi. Definitely better than grocery store sushi.
We ate it all, except for a few of those huge, overstuffed rolls on the plate. We learned that the key to one bite maki is to go easy on the rice.
Maybe next time we'll actually try some raw fish. I felt a little pretentious asking the fishmonger if they had sushi grade salmon or tuna. And I was afraid of sticker shock. But now that we know we can make sushi...
If you are feeling ambitious yourself, the one big tip I can offer you is to start the rice a couple hours before you want to roll the sushi, so it has time to cool. But don't put it in the fridge. Apparently, that's a sushi no-no. Matt's would be to line your suski mat with plastic wrap. That is, if you have and can find your sushi mat.
Lastly,
The Pioneer Woman as a two pictorials on how to make sushi (
california rolls and
others). Why a cattleman's wife in Oklahoma has the most vibrantly photographed how-to of sushi-in-the-making on the internet, I really don't know. But, it's worth checking out.