Sushi a la Whitman

For Christmas, Katie signed me up for a sushi-making class at The Party Source--a very cool gift! Kevin registered for it too, and it was a blast. We learned how to make maki sushi, drank lots of wine and had tons of sushi to take home with us (so we promptly called Katie and asked her to come over to share some).

Since we usually try to do something together for Valentine's Day rather than buying gifts, we decided to try our hand at making sushi at home last Saturday night. Katie was thoughtful enough to give me sushi rice, seaweed and sesame seeds (the basics) as part of my Christmas gift, so we just needed to buy the main ingredients. We also bought a small rice cooker and a nice mandolin slicer, which will come in handy for lots of other meals. We got all of our ingredients from Jungle Jim's in Fairfield, which was a little overwhelming on a Saturday afternoon. We picked up an inexpensive bottle of wine that the department manager recommended and a few slices of cake from the German bakery, too.

In my opinion, the two tricks to making even basic sushi are time and technique. Although it's not technically hard, there are a few things you have to do right or it could be really frustrating. For instance, we forgot to buy plastic gloves, which you need in order to roll up all the ingredients since the rice is so sticky. We had to use plastic wrap instead, which severely limited our dexterity. Our rolls turned out a little more sloppy than those we made in class, but they still tasted good. We made about eight regular-sized rolls (you get 6 to 8 bite-sized pieces from one roll) with different combinations of spicy shrimp, crabstick, smoked salmon (all the fish was cooked), cream cheese, cucumber, avacado, carrot, asparagus and scallions. It was super tasty, and we got to use the beautiful sushi dishes Dad got for me in Asia a few years ago (we actually use them any time we get take-out sushi).

At-home sushi is definitely a project and not a quick or cheap substitution for restaurant-made sushi. But if you really like sushi and are a little adventurous, it's fun to learn how to make it and to experiment with different ingredients.