sushi night

We had a sushi-making night at the home of one of my Yosakoi friends the other night. It was really cool to see how sushi was actually made, and try it for myself. Plus we got to eat some other amazing Japanese food as well.

There were lots of colourful chopsticks to choose from. There were also forks available, but one of the girls who was there said "It tastes better with chopsticks." I think she's right.

The first step was to cool down some cooked white rice and combine it with a mixture of rice vinegar and sugar. I learned how to stir the rice with a "slicing" motion so it gets sticky, but doesen't form big lumps.

Next, we put down a seaweed sheet on a little bamboo mat, and covered about half of it with rice.

After the rice comes the sushi filling. This one has sliced carrots and cucumbers. We also made some with cooked salmon.

These are the seaweed sheets we used to wrap the rice mixture.

We curled up the rice and seaweed inside the bamboo mat. Once it was made into a roll, we took it out and sliced it up.

This is another kind of sushi we tried - it has egg and cream cheese in the middle. I was a little apprehensive about the combination, but it was actually good. The cream cheese made it sweet.

We ate our sushi with a variety of other Japanese foods. In the bowls is miso soup - cubes of soft tofu in fish-flavoured broth. There was also salad and gyoza, little meat dumplings. And for the very brave there were pickled plums - probably the most sour thing I've ever tasted. We also had brown rice green tea (in the blue cups), and banana bread for dessert. Definitely a meal I wouldn't mind repeating...