operonscript.com

Karen’s Maki adventure

26th August, 2004 - Posted by Karen Hagen -

(not a picture of my maki, I forgot to take pictures)

I did something tonight that I have been meaning to do for 2 years. Become a chess champion? Become a parent? Well nothing that exciting. However, I have been wanting to make maki sushi for at least two years now and I finally got up the nerve to do it!

Maki sushi is rice, fish, and vegetables rolled together in a seaweed coating. There are many types of maki including the infamous ‘California roll’ which many westerners are familiar with. The traditional combination of ingredients includes fish, shitake mushrooms, a green vegetable, and omelet, although many unique varieties exist. The seaweed coating is roasted nori (Porphyra yezoensis) pressed into a thin sheet, which imparts a pleasant taste and smell to the maki.

All you Asian people out there are probably wondering what the big deal is; after all it really isn’t that hard. The reason it took me this long was because I didn’t have anyone to show me how to do it, and learning from a recipe book just isn’t the same. So I started slowly by learning about other types of seaweed, trying different maki in restaurants, and making sushi rice. Once I tried making the sushi rice I felt much more confident in making maki sushi. I definitely had time to practice the ‘rolling’ tonight and I think I picked it up alright.

Tonight I tried the traditional ingredients of shitake mushrooms, salmon, omelet, and cucumber (ok the cucumber isn’t really that traditional). I made the sushi rice and I have learned the hard way that the rice really does need to be cool before it can be molded. I used a fan to cool off the rice as the recipe suggested and it worked very well. Having some water with a tablespoon of rice vinegar handy is very helpful to keep the rice from sticking to your hands, as I have also learned. I followed the recipe which indicated that two rolls would be made from the ingredients and I proceeded to put half of them on the first roll. Either my nori is smaller than normal or the recipe was just wrong, but there was just no way that maki was going to close. So I took half the ingredients off and tried again and ended up with 4 rolls.

We ate our maki with the traditional soy sauce/wasabi dipping sauce, miso soup, and marinated carrot salad. All in all, a successful cooking experiment!