Friday, February 03, 2006
Sushi Maki
I guess this is some kind of a contagious virus — I too went to spend a day at the Sushi Academy with Akiko. The idea this time was to learn how to make some Sushi Maki, or Sushi rolls.
We started with the beginning — making the vinegrated rice, a very important factor of the final quality / taste of the sushi or rolls. After this, Mr. Kawasumi, the teacher, explained a few points about the knives we use, showed us the basic principles of how to cut, and mentioned a couple of details about sharpening the knives.
Before starting to make our first rolls, we all practiced a bit with a piece of tissu, supposed to be the Nori or sheet of seaweed, 60 gr of rice and a piece of cucumber. After a little while, we got to make our first rolls, the basic cucumber and Kampyo rolls. These are simple and straight forward vegetable rolls. We ate them for lunch.
After this, we got to try ourselves at making the famous Uramaki (reverse rolls), also known as the Californian rolls and another couple of variations. This is actually pretty easy, once you got the basic principle. The point is the combination of the ingredients. The Californian roll contains a piece of lettuce, Cucumber, Avocado and some Kani Kama (crab meat). We also put some Tobico (Flying Fish Roe) on the rice that is on the outside.
The second roll we made, called “pink Dragon, simply contained crab and cucumber inside, and is recovered with a thin slice of salmon.
The third one was called “Crunchy Roll” — it contains a piece of lettuce, some eel and a tempura shrimp. Sesame seeds are spread around on the rice.
All three are visually appealing and delicious.
And for the final, we learned how to make the “Odairi Sama Maki” and the “Ohina Sama Maki” — representation of the Emperor and the Empress, and Sakura roll — all three are decorative rolls, Mr. Kawasumi’s specialty. Rather than describe with words how these rolls are made, we’ll make them again and take pictures of each step. This is for another post.
I didn’t put the links for the larger size pictures. You can see them and more pictures by clicking here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/patosan/sets/72057594058516024/show/
