This weekend Lara and Holly made their own sushi using a wonderful set of Japanese ingredients that were supplied to us by Yutaka to demonstrate just how easy it is to make your own sushi at home. Until July, none of us had ever tried sushi at all - most of us aren't keen fish eaters and sushi does often tend to feature fish and seafood but the word "sushi" means simply sweetened seasoned rice so, when you make it at home you have the freedom to add to it whatever you wish.
Yutaka sent us some sushi rice which we cooked and cooled and then Lara seasoned it with a mixture of rice vinegar, sugar and salt. After that, both Holly and Lara got their sleeves rolled up and started to construct us a feast of vegetable and chicken sushi.
Lara very quickly got the hang of using the Yatuka rolling mat with a sheet of nori seaweed to make sushi rolls filled with steamed carrots, beans, beansprouts and radish. The nori smells quite strong and looks really delicate but in fact it doesn't taste as strong as we had imagined; it's a superfood with lots of acknowledged health benefits - packed full of nutrients and dietary fibre, improves bone and dental health, is high in iron and rich in protein.
Holly got busy making nigri sushi which are little bricks of rice which you decorate with one or two pieces of protein or vegetable; you can hold the decoration in place with a strip of nori. Yutaka sell a special plastic device which makes it easy to mould the little rice blocks - you pat the rice into the mould, press it down and then gently press them out again (or bang them really hard like Holly chose to). Holly enjoyed dipping these little rice parcels into roasted sesame seeds; watching her do this reminded me of watching her decorate cupcakes!
The sticky sweet rice was really hard to manage - it just got everywhere! When the girls had finished, it took me quite some time to clear up all the grains of rice, pieces of seaweed and rouge vegetables but the finished product looked really quite impressive.
To complete our dish, Lara created a homemade teryaki sauce using japanese soy sauce and mirin (a recipe on the back of one of the Yutaka bottles). We used this to marinade two chicken breasts which I think fried and sliced thinly. To serve, we put the remaining vegetables in a bowl with some spring onion and boiled eggs and served our sushi with dipping vinegar, soy sauce and a japanese curry sauce that Mr. B. made.
The girls both very much enjoyed the sushi and teryaki chicken. Both girls even enjoyed trying out the pickled ginger which you use to cleanse your palette. Lara, who is a big fan of spicy food, even tried out the hot wasabi paste - I think she was fascinated by it, but she chose not to go back for more!
We had great fun making sushi; it's a fun, healthy food that the kids can get really messy joining in with.
Holly got busy making nigri sushi which are little bricks of rice which you decorate with one or two pieces of protein or vegetable; you can hold the decoration in place with a strip of nori. Yutaka sell a special plastic device which makes it easy to mould the little rice blocks - you pat the rice into the mould, press it down and then gently press them out again (or bang them really hard like Holly chose to). Holly enjoyed dipping these little rice parcels into roasted sesame seeds; watching her do this reminded me of watching her decorate cupcakes!
The sticky sweet rice was really hard to manage - it just got everywhere! When the girls had finished, it took me quite some time to clear up all the grains of rice, pieces of seaweed and rouge vegetables but the finished product looked really quite impressive.
To complete our dish, Lara created a homemade teryaki sauce using japanese soy sauce and mirin (a recipe on the back of one of the Yutaka bottles). We used this to marinade two chicken breasts which I think fried and sliced thinly. To serve, we put the remaining vegetables in a bowl with some spring onion and boiled eggs and served our sushi with dipping vinegar, soy sauce and a japanese curry sauce that Mr. B. made.
The girls both very much enjoyed the sushi and teryaki chicken. Both girls even enjoyed trying out the pickled ginger which you use to cleanse your palette. Lara, who is a big fan of spicy food, even tried out the hot wasabi paste - I think she was fascinated by it, but she chose not to go back for more!
We had great fun making sushi; it's a fun, healthy food that the kids can get really messy joining in with.
