On sushi

Sushi is a very common dish. Not only is it delicious and simple to eat, it's easily made.

In my family, however, the image of "traditional sushi" is a little different. There are a few reasons for that. For one, most of us are vegetarians, so the classic raw-fish-on-rice thing just wouldn't work. And somewhere along the way of homemade sushi, we began putting Mozzarella cheese in our sushi. And dipping it in Maggi soy sauce [note: the Maggi sauce we buy is the one with the red cap, here in Europe, for the yellow capped ones have some type of... "meat" in there. I think it's fish oil or something.] So our sushi is very Westernized.

We always try various variations. Also, since for some reason, we almost never buy the pink, pickled young ginger, I make ours. Of course, it's not pink, nor is it young ginger. It's just very thin slices of regular ginger, minced into thin strands. I leaved it in a covered jar of white vinegar that was seasoned with some salt and plenty of sugar. Almost every time we eat some, I have to go sliced some more ginger, to keep the supply up.

For wasabi... We've gone through various types. Personally, I don't eat spicy (though I can stand some milder Malaysian curries, Italian pizza spicy oil, and a few shreds of chillin in dip sauces for spring rolls and such), so I used to never take any. Recently, that has been another story. My parents first started using this tube of wasabi, ready-made. Then they got this powder to mix with water. At the moment, we have this mix of wasabi-salt-pepper to mix with soy sauce. It's good, and not too strong -- especially since I can control how much powder I want to put in.

To get the typical sushi rice... usually, we don't really bother with the normal round-grain rice usually used for sushi. Being an asian family, we always have rice handy. For us, any rice is good, as long as cooked to the right texture. And the rice-cooker does that for us ^^. Recently, we also used red rice~ It brings another flavor to the rolls. I just bought a bottle of sushi vinegar at the asian market, and mix that into the rice. There should be varieties of vinegar that are all ready, but I accidentally got a bottle that wasn't "sweet," so I take the sugar, mix it in a little hot water to dissolve it, and mix it into the vinegar before adding to the rice. It takes a little experimenting.

For "stuffing" -- usually anything we can get our hands on. On good days, it would be Mozzarella cheese, avocado, boiled carrots, black sesame, takuwan (daikon... pickled radish. Most of the time, it's a crunchy, and yellow)... It's not bad with apples, green beans, sliced fried tofu... the possibilities are limitless! Most anything sliced into little sticks work well with sushi. Sometimes, we put shiitake mushrooms cooked a special way, but despite the good smell, I dislike the taste of shiitake. So no mushrooms for me!

I have gone to two different sushi restaurants recently. One was just a very small place in Ukiah, California, where reservations are required. Another is a restaurant in Munich, Germany, where I ate "running sushi" for the first time! Both had sushi that had cream cheese in it, so maybe next time I make sushi, I'll put that in, since it's so tasty!

Here's just a plate of makis (sushi rolls) and onigiris (rice balls) I made for a snack~ All composed of red rice, nori (seawed sheet), a sesame and wasabi paste, and some soy sauce.

Forgive me if I made any mistakes in the names. I am not Japanese, but got used to seeing the terms in mangas and online, among other things.

Enjoy~