The faithful blog readers would know I heart Japanese food. I would eat it everyday if it is not so darn expensive! The thought of making my sushi keeps popping up each and everytime I am eating at a Japanese restaurant. For example, "Aiyoh, why am I paying so much for something so easy as a sushi roll?? So easy, just cook sushi rice, put in some liao (fillings) on a nori sheet then roll lah!" or "Dang! This thing costs $XX??!! I can make it for 30%!" etc. You get the drift.
So anyhow, when I was grocery shopping (the supermarket is my good friend) the other day, I found myself picking up ingredients for sushi-making. Short grain (sushi) rice that is so darn expensive for that little pack, sushi su (vinegar), nori sheets, the artificially-pink-sweet-but-attractive fish floss, kanpyo (pickled gourd strips). I did not have to buy wasabi, something I already have in the fridge, and soy sauce, I would imagine it is a given in all Chinese households. Since then, they had just been sitting in the cabinet for a couple of weeks.
Luckily for the lazy and event-free Sunday evening, I decided to break the spell and got down to making a futomaki sushi dinner. But the lack of preparation meant I did not have the cucumbers I needed for my greens. Anyway, I used french beans :-)
Ta-ta!
They look appetizing, no? (be nice please!) This one you see here is my last (and best-looking) roll. You can probably imagine how the first few looked. Hehe.
Personally, I found the main challenge to be trying to gauge how much rice you need to spread out. Next would be the actual rolling, making sure the ingredients are tight and the rolls won't fall apart later.
Appetizing or not, they do taste pretty good. Although on hindsight, if I had trusted the recommended "dosage" of on the sushi su bottle, the rice would have been just that bit tastier! Oh well.
But after this virgin sushi-making experience, I do appreciate the value of eating at restaurants. The ingredients are not cheap so making your own would mean a lot of up-front capital investment. It is also certainly not easy to make decent sushi rolls as I found out. 1 hour of kitchen and labor time resulted only in a 10 minute eating time.
I still have enough ingredients for another bout of sushi-making when the opportunity comes along. But I think I will stick to paying a restaurant any other times.
6 comments:
hey, can I know where do you get the sushi rice and vinegar? I can't seem to figure out what I'm supposed to get!!
vlazygirl, u can try the japanese food section of your supermarket.
vinegar is most likely near the sauces, salad dressings etc. it should be labeled 'sushi su' or pictured with sushi. a popular brand is mizkan :)
for the sushi rice, you can use Australian or Japanese calrose (Short grain) rice. try the japanese food section again or the regular rice section.
Good Luck!
Guess who made some? Thanks Mia!
Sushi is one of those things that look simple, but their very simplicity is what makes them so difficult to master. Sushi is highly unforgiving of mistakes. I know when I sit down at a sushi bar, I'm paying for the itamae's skill. I can't duplicate those flavors in my own kitchen, no matter how hard I try.
Well done - I find getting the rice right is so important for the flavor, but also not as easy sa it would seem. And I agree about the strangely-colored-yet-alluring fish bits. :)
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