Sushi!

I've been promising myself that I am going to make sushi for a while now. I used to make it really regularly last year but haven't got around to it at all recently. I went through a huge phase of making it for lunch every day (onigiri, inari and norimaki), and it was really quite simple. As I'm at home quite a lot nowadays I thought I'd make some sushi rolls this afternoon, but discovered that I didn't actually have any nori seaweed in the cupboard as I thought I did. The soya wraps that I bought for the boy as an alternative (he has a huge dislike of anything seaweedy!) had also gone past their use by date... so I thought I'd make some onigiri. I purchased some moulds for making these cute little stuffed sushi rice balls a while ago on Ebay, and they are very handy indeed. The boy also loves them because seaweed doesn't come into the equation ;)

Here are a few pictures of today's Sushi adventure. The first shows some of my ingredients. These range from a plum flavoured vinegar powder that dyes the rice pink (I used this in my onigiri today to add a bit of colour and make it more interesting). I have wasabi flavoured sesame seeds and different flavoured "sprinkles" for the outsides of the onigiri. Also in this photo are the onigiri moulds and the mock duck stuffing that I used inside the onigiri, marinading in some garlic teriyaki sauce:

The process of making the onigiri themselves is quite messy and sticky, but very fun! You basically fill up half the mould with rice, press it down, and form a small hole in it for your filling. Marinaded tempeh and tofu always go well in the middle, especially in a sweet hoisin sauce.

And here is the finished result. One cup of sushi rice, mixed with some sushi vinegar and a small amount of sugar yields about 4 decent sized onigiri. I have placed them in the fridge until later, so that they can chill and set a little more. I would normally wrap a strip of nori seaweed around the base (like in the cute cartoon pic) so that they are easier to pick up and eat. These onigiri are great snacks to take to work. Don't worry if you don't have a mould, you can easily make them by draping some clingfilm over your hand and forming a rice ball that way - leave them wrapped in the clingfilm so that you an unwrap them at work and they don't get all squished in transit :)