Dinner!

A few months ago, I got invited to a sushi-rolling class/party hosted by some ladies from work.
One of the Japanese women's mother was our teacher for the afternoon.  We brought some ingredients and she tried to teach us the correct way to roll sushi.  Everyone was amused by my bacon and carrots; apparently the Japanese don't tend to use bacon or carrots in their sushi.  We got to keep our sushi rolling pads, and I had good time.

Since then, I've made sushi at home a couple of times, and before one recent dinner I told Lee that if he wanted any he'd have to photograph the process for the blog.  He got some good pictures of the first roll, then went back to more important things (video games).  So, to make sushi.  First, you need some sushi rice, cooked and seasoned.  I use this recipe.  It makes a enough rice to feed Japan for a week.  You also need a small bowl of water because the rice will stick to your hands very easily unless they are wet.
Of course, you also need the fillings.  I like crab and bacon rolls as well as cucumber rolls, so we had crab, bacon (already cooked), sushi-grade raw salmon, cucumbers, and carrots.  Everything was of course pre-sliced and ready to go before I started.  You also need the nori (seaweed wrappers), and a rolling mat to roll the sushi on.

You put the nori on the mat shiny side down, rinse off your fingers, and take a large double handful of rice.  You spread the rice out over the nori, and you should go pretty much to the ends on three sides but about 1/2" to 1" from the top end.  This is the most difficult part for me.  You have to disperse the rice without actually smushing it around, and the rice likes to stick to itself, the nori, and anything else it comes into contact with.  The grains of rice are still warm and soft, so easily mushable, and you want distinct grains inside your sushi roll.  This usually takes me awhile and a few dunks of my hands into the water to get right.

Once you finally have your rice spread out (and in this case, there should be a bit more rice around the edges and bottom) you can start filling it.  You want to pile your fillings in the center of the rice covered area.  Once it is filled, you roll it up.  You want to roll it up as tightly as you can, joining the rice at the bottom to the rice at the top, so the top uncovered nori overlaps the rice-covered nori of the bottom.  Then you squish it down into a square or circle to make it nice and tight.  Ta-da!

Rinse (always gotta keep rinsing the hands in that water!) and repeat until your nori, rice, or fillings are gone, or you have enough rolls.  Cut the rolls using a knife dipped in water, because again, the rice will stick to everything.  Enjoy the sushi, for it will be delicious.  We did not eat all of this sushi for dinner, it was lunch and dinner the next day as well, and I still have a lot of rice left in the fridge.  It tastes pretty good mixed with vegetables as a side, and I'm going to try to reconstitute it for more sushi since we have more nori as well.