This certainly was a long time coming.
I don’t like salty food. Salt – sure, I like it. But I hate olives, anchovies, pepperoni, and all that icky stuff. I also loathe spicy food, and have never voluntarily eaten anything that was pickled (yuck!). So I had a fairly good idea of what my reaction to sushi would be. There is absolutely no way I’d have eaten sushi if it wasn’t on the steffmetal.com list.
I’m also not huge on anime either (I like plots to make sense, and breasts to obey the laws of nature), but we watched “Read or Die” which has one of the best heroines ever invented anywhere. (She find and buys a rare book that it turns out the baddies need in order to kill all humans. They steal it, so she has all kinds of amazing magical action sequences, and as she’s flying through the air getting shot at she says to the baddie, “Excuse me, can I have my book back? I haven’t finished reading it.”)
Fay gathered the ingredients: sushi rice, sushi powder (basically vinegar), nori (seaweed sheets), some fresh vegetables, soy sauce, chicken, tinned fish, mayonaisse, pickled ginger, and wasabi. All of the ingredients were on the shelves in a major supermarket (which apparently used to stock Asian mayonaisse, but doesn’t any more).
We cooked the rice, fried the chicken in garlic, and chopped the vegies.
I was getting pretty hungry, but no more enthusiastic than before. Cucumber? Yuck!
Fay rolled out the bamboo mat and laid a sheet of nori on top. Once she’d demonstrated what to do, I took over. I spread out the rice, pushing it down, and put mayonaisse on top.
I laid vegetables long-wise, and pieces of chicken (thinly sliced), and rolled it up as tightly as I could, pressing down at the end so the empty bit of seaweed stuck to the roll. Then I sliced it.
I took a piece, added soy sauce and (gulp) pickled ginger, and. . . ate it.
Madness! Chaos! The destruction of all I once knew!
The world is cute and round and saltily wonderful. Sushi is delicious and I can’t for the life of me figure out why. It’s as satisfying as eating chips, but with a symphony of flavours and colours that makes the saltiness sing.
Turns out I adore pickled ginger (strangely sweet in combination, but with a nasty bite when I tried it on its own), too.
We all had a go at the curiously satisfying construction, and tried different flavour combinations (avocado and chicken is good, but it’s actually better with more vegetables, especially cucumber – HAS THE WORLD GONE MAD???)
I gathered my scattered wits and courage, and tried one with wasabi and. . . luckily (for the sake of all that is solid in the world) I didn’t like it.
But I wants me more more sushi. Right now.
Actually, CJ and I will probably have some for lunch. That leaves just three more hours until I gets me some more sweet sweet sushi.
mmMMMMmmm
…You do, of course, realise that you are actually the last person in the world to realise that Sushi is delicious…?
Ben: I’d heard of a lot of people liking it. I just assumed they were all morons.
LOL!!!!!! At least we can now add the sushi train to the places you must try. Although Canberra lacks a really good train…….. But hey, that’s an excuse to hit Sydney one weekend!
@Ben – She is soooooo behind the times at times, isn’t she!
Ann: It’s like all the saltiness is just screaming, “Look at meeeee!!! Look how delicious I am!!!”
*drool* sushi *drool* :P\…
It was very delicious, and having never made it *myself* before, I will now be making my own solo attempts.
W: It was a *really* good evening, and I can’t believe how simple it was to make.
The home science teacher in me is:
a) Thrilled that you have attempted a new food and enjoyed it.
b) duty bound to point out that what you have made here is actually called nori maki – which directly translates as rolled seaweed.
Enjoy the new world which has opened up before you – try the flavoured tins of tuna in nori maki, and there are some great videos around of the correct ways to eat them.
Megan Jackson: We ran out of rice before we ran out of chicken, so we’re saving the salmon and tuna for another feast on Monday. I can’t wait!
Yay, glad you loved it! My old boyfriend got me into it – I always thought it looked disgusting, but … there you go.
My favorite flavor, which is not even remotely asian, is avocado, pineapple and cream cheese.
I didn’t know this was actually called nori maki – learn something new every day 🙂
Steff: Avocado, cream cheese and pineapple sounds FILTHY. I’ll have to try it in a few years (I’m temporarily allergic to most fruit).