All Sorts of Home-Made Sushi

This Christmas season has been a very unique one. Just this week, the boy had a slight cough and went to see a doctor for the cough syrup and had a Stay Home Notice slapped on him as well. So there goes our Christmas weekend. Instead of a few nice walks that I had planned in mind for all of us, we have to now stay at home and survive on board games, toys, ball kicking at the corridor and a few doses of Netflix for the next three days (five days SHN in all).

I tell myself that I should count my blessings in every situation that happens to me (not always easy ya). And everything has to be a blessing in disguise. So… yes, at least it isn’t a quarantine that we were slapped with, and the boy has no other symptoms (so it’s definitely not Covid-19 fortunately). The boy is certainly very happy to be staying at home too because it means that he doesn’t have to go to school for two days. His parents are perhaps the only ones saddened by the SHN, but ok, I think I have managed to get over it after being in denial for the whole of yesterday. At least I can still go out so he can stay at home all he wants.

And of course, we have been very fortunate amidst the whole pandemic going on this entire year to have none of our family members contract this deadly and scary virus. So far, none of us has had to do any quarantines too so I am keeping my fingers crossed that this SHN will be the worst thing happening to us this year.

The whole world has changed so much, it’s almost unrecognisable. But we still need to keep going and continue to eat don’t we?

So since it’s the Christmas weekend, I have decided to feature a recipe that I personally like a lot, because I managed to succeed in one try and eating it makes the boy very happy – sushi. The boy now has a much better appetite and can eat up to eight pieces of sushi at one go on better days. He loves eating Maki-san and I do buy that for him on some days when I feel I can afford it (it’s not cheap!). But making sushi at home is definitely much cheaper. This was my key motivation when I decided to give sushi a try. And I have not regretted it since, given how easy and delicious it is with very simple ingredients. I am definitely going to make sushi a lot more frequently at home now. Yummy!!

Ingredients:

Sushi rice (short grain rice): 2 cups (200g)
Water: 1.8 cups
Kombu (dried kelp): 1
Sushi vinegar: 4 tbsp (1/3 cup) or substitute with 4 tbsp rice vinegar, 2 tbsp sugar & 2 tsp salt
Nori (seaweed): 4 pieces
Avocado: 1, seed remove, sliced
Crab stick: 50g
Salmon sashimi: 50g, sliced
Ebiko (prawn roe): 50g
Tamagoyaki (omelette): 50g, sliced
Inari age (seasoned deep-fried beancurd pouches): 4
Tobiko (salmon roe): 50g

Method (Sushi):

Wash and rinse sushi rice 6 to 7 times till water becomes clean & clear. Leave to soak in water for 10min.
Place rice, water and kombu into rice cooker and set to cook.
Transfer cooked rice into sushi oke or any flat trays. Discard the kombu.
Using a rice spatula, mix in sushi vinegar while the rice is hot, fanning it at the same time so that the rice can absorb the seasoning evenly. Use a cutting motion to stir the vinegar into the rice so that the rice is not squished and looks ‘shiny’. Add in a tsp of sugar to taste if using the sushi vinegar.
Set up bamboo mat, covering it with cling wrap.
Place a piece of nori at one end of the mat, keeping in mind to roll with the longer side.
Wet hands with vinegar water (water + a tbsp of rice vinegar) so that rice does not stick onto them. Scoop a cup of rice onto seaweed, flattening it to spread it out.
Place preferred ingredients onto rice near to rolling edge of seaweed. Here I have used avocado, crab stick, salmon sashimi, ebiko and tamagoyaki, changing it out in alternate rolls.
Roll with mat, pushing it halfway through inwards to neaten the roll. Continue shaping the rolled sushi with the mat to fix up its shape.
Slice with clean knife starting from the centre towards the left or right. Clean the knife after every slice.

Method (California Rolls):

To make the california rolls, distribute the ebiko throughout the rice after step 8. Then flip over the seaweed such that the ebiko is on the cling wrap.
Place the ingredients onto the seaweed and roll up carefully such that the rice is on the outside of the roll.

Method (Inari sushi):

To make the inari sushi, knead a handful of rice into an oval shape and press into the inari age.
Top off with preferred ingredients. I added tamagoyaki, salmon, crab stick in different pouches and topped off each one of them with ebiko and tobiko. You can also add in tuna mayo or egg mayo if preferred.

Tricks:

Remember to use the cutting method to mix in the sushi vinegar so that the rice grains do not get squished.
Using the sushi kobe is supposed to help enhance the flavours with its inherent wooden musty flavour. It’s okay without it though – tried and tested!