Tired and poorer from our shopping trip, we proudly laid out our sushi supplies on the counter. And so the trouble began: now that we’d bought all this crap, what were we supposed to do with it?
I’d already lied to the Nordic Warrior Queen, assuring her with false bravado that, sure, I could make sushi. No problem.
As the shrimp boat captain might say, I was in deep mango.
So while she put away the rest of the groceries, I fired up the computer and Googled furiously for whatever sushi-making advice I could find, but succeeded only in confusing myself further.
It looked like those Japanese fellows standing behind the sushi-bar in their funny hats are not just Kung-Fu masters; they’re highly-trained chefs besides. I didn’t have a chance.
Still, my ancient Nordic ancestors were fisherman – surely I’d inherited some genetic material from them, even if it was geared more towards rolling up a chunk of herring or lutefisk in a lefse wrap. Surely I could figure this thing out.
Suddenly the theme song from Rocky popped into my brain. I’d start with the rice. The online instructions were straightforward, if laborious. Sure, that was it. And just to be safe, I doubled up on the recipe, so I had enough to practice with.
After an hour or so of rinsing, scrubbing, rinsing, soaking, measuring, cooking, pouring, and resting (the rice, not me), I had what a virtual mountain of what appeared to be passable sushi-rice. Wow, there was a lot: nobody told me how much this crap expands during cooking.
Oh well, time for the filling.
I tasked my wife with preparing the vegetables, so while she furiously julienned the cucumber, avocado, cream cheese, and jalapeno, I performed the man-work: slicing the tuna.
Fifteen minutes later, we were ready. I ruefully surveyed the various mounds of ingredients, knowing I could delay no longer, and grabbed a handful of rice, carefully pushing it down onto the nori, the paper-thin sheet of roasted seaweed which was supposed to gracefully accept the layer of sticky rice on my hands.
Instead, I was left with a big sticky glob of soggy, seaweed-laden rice, like a dirty snowball covered in green snot. I chucked it in the garbage, rinsed off my hands, and went back to Google.
As it turns out, you’re supposed to dip your hands in water before handling the rice, preferably with a mixture of half rice-vinegar and half water. Okay.
The next attempt was better. Of course, I layered the sheet with too much rice, so when I flipped it over it broke in half. Into the trash went roll number two.
On my third attempt the rice layering was almost perfect. Now we were getting somewhere. But when I loaded up the vegetables, I put too much in, and was left with kind of an inverted, limp U-shape after rolling.
Roll number four – catastrophe. All was fine right up until the final moment: when I touched the knife to my perfect sushi roll, it collapsed into a colorful mess. I guess I need a sharper knife.
Over the next hour or so, I made a number of increasingly successful attempts, but none that looked like what we’d eat at a restaurant. By now we were getting hungry, though, and the rice had turned a bit gelatinous, so we ate the vaguely tubular constructs I’d produced thus far and glopped what was left of the rice into little flat pancake shapes, heaping the vegetables and fish on top.
In the end, given enough soy sauce and wasabi, the shape of the roll really doesn’t matter, does it? It all tastes the same.
But I’m planning on a few more lessons at the sushi bar.