Make Your Own Sushi Night

Last night, I invited some friends over to take part in my "make your own" sushi night. I've made sushi once before and really had fun. Plus, it's a great excuse to play with your food!

Now to make sushi, you need sushi grade fresh fish. Graham and I headed over toTokyo Fish Market in Berkeley. While it was kind of pricey, the variety and quality of fish is unbeatable. We picked up some japanese cucumbers, avocados, pickled ginger, rice, wasabi, nori (seaweed), tuna, hamachi, and salmon. Graham also got these super sour lemon candies that he remembered from his childhood. Apparently his brother used to eat them a lot and his dentist noticed the horrible effect on his tooth enamel. Needless to say, I tried my first and last one after hearing that story.

So, what is sushi (well, Americanized sushi) without imitation crab? Authentic? Ha, no you have to have it! At Tokyo Fish Market they only had frozen imitation crab sticks which sounded unappealing to me. Luckily, there is another Asian food market 5 minutes away from this market called Ranch 99. We headed over and picked up some imitation crab meat, soy sauce, rice vinegar, gyoza (japanese potstickers), edamame (soy beans), and Sapporo (Japanese beer). We also got some cheap disposable chopsticks and bamboo sushi mats. It sounds like a lot of ingredients but I wanted to make this as 'authentic' as possible.

I cooked up the rice in my tiny rice cooker (1 1/2 cups of water to 1 cup of rice) and then mixed in the rice seasoning. It is important to let the rice cool before you try and make your rolls, otherwise it will stick to the mat, make the nori all gummy, and be very hard to roll/cut. While the rice was cooling, I chopped up all of the veggies and fish. If I had more time, I would have made my own gyoza (I love the wrappers you can buy at the grocery store, actually I like making those more than I like making sushi). However, I didn't have time so I took the frozen gyoza and edamame out of the freezer and cooked them up (with some help, thanks guys!).

Surprise sushi artist of the night: Damir. Who would of thought that a 6'8" Slovenian would be pretty darn good at making sushi rolls! His were definitely the best but that is not to say that the rest of ours were bad. I think we did pretty well and they tasted like the real deal too. For an added bonus, my friends brought over homemade cupcakes from scratch. Chocolate raspberry-filled with cream cheese frosting. Yum!

Next time your feeling creative, try making your own sushi. Invite some good friends over and have a go at it. Even if your sushi ends up looking like somebody dropped it on the floor, stepped on it, and then threw it against the wall, you'll still have tons of fun.

She snuck a piece of salmon after we had all finished eating