Yep, I can now make SUSHI!

This past Saturday turned out to be a really exciting day for me, what I call a “SQUEE” day, because in my joy, I tend to make squee-like sounds. I stopped by Hobby Lobby to get the last of the required materials for my planned Halloween decorations, and ended up finding a substitute that saved me money. My last stop that day was Hancock Fabrics to buy a couple of yards of material for my new crafting venture, quilting (this should be fun!). But the stop in between made me the happiest by far!

Vinh Phat Grogery. What a place! A friend of mine actually told me about it one day while we were having dinner at a Filipino restaurant (which unfortunately didn’t last too long and is no longer there). Needless to say, I owe this woman more than she can imagine! Walking into the store for the first time was quite overwhelming, to say the least. The aisles aren’t too narrow, but in many, not only are the shelves PACKED with things, right on top of each other, but there are also boxes on the floor holding even MORE merchandise! Add in the fact that the predominant language on the labels is mostly Asian, and a person who can’t even claim to have a second language (even though I took French for a total of 4 years in high school and college) can get lost pretty quickly. But after browsing, you can learn fairly quickly where things generally are, which makes shopping a bit easier. You also have to take time to actually look and read labels, but those moments can produces some true gems!

One such example was the previous visit to Vinh Phat, when I was looking at the stuff in the freezer and found masago, or flying fish roe, something that I LOVE to have on my sushi! But sometimes my brain doesn’t function, so I simply thought oh, how cool, and walked off. K About a month or so ago, a friend of mine and I went out to look for Halloween decorations, and we stopped by Target so that I could look for a now impossible to find popcorn (if anyone ever sees a box of Orville Redenbacher POUR OVER Cheddar, PLEASE call me immediately! But it HAS to be POUR OVER!). It was lunch time, and Target’s sushi has always been fairly decent, so I picked some up for lunch. Somehow this started my sushi addiction all over again, but all I really want now are rolls, not my usual sashimi. One of my favorites is Inari (or “brown bag”) sushi, which isn’t fish at all, but is actually a sweet fried soy bag or pocket, stuffed with rice. So I buy the pack of sushi that contains the Inari and some snow crab rolls. One of my brain synapses fired, and this lead me to a classic I wonder if I can make that moment. So I hit the internet, but no luck on finding a recipe of HOW to make the bags, only how to prepare them. My brain STILL isn’t quite functional at this point, but I DO remember that a friend sent me a link to an Asian grocery site, so I start pricing things, including a sushi mat to make actual rolls. THEN it hit me! Vinh Phat! Besides food, they also have dishes, pots, pans, decorations, utensils for eating and cooking, little Buddha statues, incense. You name it, they probably have it! So I cross my fingers and plan a trip.

Which brings me to Saturday. I look up and down through their kitchen ware, I find bamboo chopsticks that are about 200 pairs for $1.50, I KID YOU NOT (well, I can’t estimate numbers very well, so it may have only been 100, but it was a LOT), I find the most adorable blue fish-shaped plate that WILL be mine one day, sushi sets, tea sets, EVERYTHING, but no sushi mats after 30 minutes of extensive searching. So I resign myself to simply buy whichever ingredients I can, and I would just buy the mat and Inari bags online. Then I find Inari bags, already prepared (minus the rice) in a can! Okay, that’s nice. So then I am picking out my nori (the seaweed sheets), and I look over to find…the sushi mats at the end of the aisle! SQUEE! NOW I am in business. So I buy my pickled ginger, I HAPPEN to find the red picked radish that I like (usually it is yellow), so that’s another squee moment, then finally I go to grab a container of masago. But as I take a closer look to see if I can find anything new and interesting, I see…SESAME BALLS! SUPER SQUEE! These are the reason why I go to Great Wall! They are sweet bean paste inside a dough made of rice flour, rolled in sesame seeds, then fried up, and they are SO YUMMY! So naturally, I buy a bag. With plans on stopping by Fresh Pickins for avocado and cucumber, and Walmart for artificial crab, I am all set to recreate my delicious sushi box, with the added bonus of desert!

I have tried to make sushi rolls before, but apparently I didn’t have the correct recipe for the rice, and I also didn't have the right equipment (the mat) or seaweed. So I cooked the last of my calrose rice, followed the directions from various sites, and just went to town!



The makings of a snowcrab roll and Inari sushi



I had a large bag of sesame seeds at home, but you always see the black ones mixed in for sushi, so I bought some black sesame, and made my own mix. I had wasabi powder (that’s its original form according to a friend of mine) at home and mixed my own, but I am going to stick to the prepared paste now that I found it; mine still had that dehydrated taste, even after sitting for a while. With all my ingredients and equipment on hand, I rolled (and stuffed)!



Yes, I know my plate is small and over stuffed. I need a proper plate. That fish-shaped one would be nice! ;)



The final result was actually BETTER than I imagined! The taste was AMAZING! My rolling technique could be a little tighter, but I will get better with time. The best part is that I can make up a fresh roll at almost any time! I don’t like sushi that’s been sitting in the refrigerator overnight because the rice becomes hard, and it drastically reduces the palatability of sushi for me (somehow the grocery store cooler doesn’t do this to the rice). But if you reheat the rice in the microwave and THEN make a roll, it is just as good as when it was made with rice freshly cooked.

I haven’t been able to make other types yet because I ran out of rice, and I don’t know where I can find sushi-grade fish, but I DO know where I can find smoked salmon, so next paycheck will see some Philadelphia rolls! I still have a few shrimp in my freezer, so I may try my hand at Crunchy roll some day soon as well. If I can ever get a blender and NOT break it the first time I use it, I will try to make a ginger dressing sauce like they have at Koto’s, and then I will try to recreate their Bomb roll, which is really good, but is fully cooked since they tempura fry it (in other words, I don't have to worry about sushi-grade raw fish). I can’t wait! So if you don’t mind the not-so-fishy and artificial crab rolls, let me know, come on over, and we can ROLL with it however you want! Maybe I can even convince you to watch Memoirs of a Geisha with me for the umpteenth gazillion time! I certainly have enough green tea!