Japanese Meal Time: Sushi

Like any normal day, my mom and I were left to decide what to have for lunch. My dad wasn't present that afternoon, so this time, just before my brother comes down to the kitchen with an empty stomach, begging for food. Not much brainstorming was required for lunch, because we simply decided to make my favourite food - sushi! :D

It certainly hasn't been ages since we had some homemade Japanese food for a meal (hayashi rice!). But I, as an ardent Japanese food admirer, found it very hard to refuse. The fillings that we usually use for making sushi would be crabsticks, little tempura shrimps and egg. We've never made sushi with fresh raw fish at home, for various reasons like the cost and the availability. It's just not really appropriate for impromptu whipping up of meals, since it's definitely not there every single time we're in a pinch :P

 This was what went on at the kitchen:

Rolling it all in is the most tricky yet fun part. I've learned quite a bit through experience. When I first started, I put too much rice in, making the roll very bulky and hard to roll...whoops. Since then, I never fill the whole nori (のり), with rice, leaving a small fraction of the seaweed uncovered. I think by doing so, it made the roll tighter so that it won't collapse. Sometimes the nori will overly stick to your rice, making it lose its 'crispiness' (though this particular brand is actually not very crispy). Also, care needs to be taken to make sure you don't have any holes on the surface.



Delicious but ancient furikake (ふりかけ). Combine a warm, newly-cooked bowl of rice and a small packet of these flavourful things and you've got yourself a quick and tasty meal. The orange one is my absolute favourite - Otona no Furikake (おとな の ふりかけ) in salmon flavour. The blue one is I think, bonito-flavoured while the green one is egg-flavoured. They all contain tiny shreds of nori (のり).

We made miso (みそ) soup as an accompanying dish. This miso too, is rather ancient, hence the small amount remaining. This tub contains white miso, as indicated on the lid.

I put in whatever was left of the miso in the tub and placed it in the sieve, which is partly submerged in boiling water. I actually started diluting miso paste with a sieve after watching the Japanese cooking-themed drama 'Osen' (おせん), though it is optional. I just thought it made the dissolving process faster, and it is a sure way to obtain a clump-free result.

A scoop of this size makes for a very salty soup, so adding more water or sugar won't hurt. Supposedly, if you dilute the miso paste in dashi (だし, Japanese broth/stock) instead of water, you'll achieve a more flavourful result. While I believe this is true, I have yet to try making this at home with dashi, again because of the availability.

One would then achieve this nicely-coloured (if I do say so myself) soup. Occasional stirring is of course, needed as it will dissipate (and look like clouds) when left unattended for a while. Not that it affects the taste in any way.

We used silken tofu (とうふ) and some seaweed both cut into little bite-sized pieces.

Pour the miso shiru (みそ しる) in the bowl and serve!

The end result of all that rolling and cutting. From the top row: Unrolled tempura (てんぷら) shrimps, crabstick rolls (with a little drop of mayonnaise on top) and tempura rolls. We didn't use eggs this time. But if we did, they would've looked like so:

This is just a reference pic from our last sushi meal, with the egg rolls placed on the top right.



Furikake rice balls, made of leftover rice. Here we have bonito-flavoured balls (brown-coloured), an egg-flavoured ball (yellow-coloured with long strips of seaweed) and a salmon-flavoured ball (pink-coloured).



Here's what our meal looked like put together \:D/. We made ocha (お茶) as drinks and poured little amounts of Japanese shoyu (しょうゆ) into saucers. Lastly, I summoned my favourite pencil chopsticks.

And to top it all off, we were done just in time - I could hear footsteps racing down the stairs ;)

アリシア 

Now listening: Orange (オレンジ) - GReeeeN