Vegan Hand Roll (Sushi) and/Or Sushi Plate

Helllllllllllllllo!

Seriously, everyone should try drinking kombucha in a wine glass. It makes me feel like such a luxurious person:

I don't know if you remembered, or knew for that matter, but I used to work for Sushi Zanmai, there I learned how to make the perfect sushi rice and the basics of rolling sushi. We were having a gluten free friend over for dinner the other night and I wanted to make sushi (turns out, my nori had gone bad, so I made one hand-roll which I photographed and turned the rest of my ingredients into a sushi-plate instead)

This is vegan and gluten free

You will need:

For sushi-- (this serves 6 people, reduce as needed)

3 cups of sushi rice

1/2 cup rice vinegar

1/4 cup of white sugar

1tablespoon of sesame oil

sesame seeds (I have black and white sesame seeds!!)

Roasted seaweed (nori) cut into half-sheets (for hand rolls)

Suggested fillings/toppings--

3 stalks of green onion, chopped into thin rounds

2 carrots, grated

Coarsely chopped garlic, about 4 cloves

1/2 cucumber, peeled and cut into strips

1 cup of baked tofu, cubed (I baked my tofu, at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes, on a cookie sheet and flipping it once, I marinated my tofu in pineapple juice, tamari, sesame oil and maple syrup for 30 minutes before I baked it)

1 avocado

For Ponzu:

1/4 cup of lime juice

1/4 cup of tamari

dash of chopped green onion

For Spicy Mayo:

1 tablespoon of Sriracha

1 tablespoon of tamari

2 tablespoons of mayo or veganaise

Start your sushi rice-- place 3 cups of sushi rice and 4 cups of water into a pan that has a tight fitting lid. Bring to a boil. Boil for one minute, stirring and then cover and reduce heat to low and allow to cook/steam with the lid on for 20 minutes. Then remove the covered rice from heat and keep it covered for another 10 minutes.

While the rice is cooking, prep your veggies/fillings:

I fried my coarsely chopped garlic in sesame oil as an added filling-- who doesn't love friend garlic? Fry the garlic over medium heat until it is golden brown. Then remove it from heat and drain the sesame oil.

 Mix the sushi rice ingredients: rice vinegar, sesame oil and sugar, with a fork until the sugar is dissolved. It isn't quite a full quarter cup of sugar in this recipe...just an fyi.

When the sushi rice has finished sitting for the additional 10 minutes of covered time after the initial 20 minutes of covered on the stove time (so uh, after 30 minutes of rice steaming) uncover and stir the vinegar-sugar mixture in with a wooden spoon. Stir it gently as you don't want to crush the rice-- think of it as folding the liquid in.

When it is mixed thoroughly the rice will be quite sticky and stand on its own without settling under its own weight. Allow the rice mixture to cool for another few minutes uncovered as you will have to handle it with your hands and don't want to burn yourself.

Mix your sauce ingredients if you want them (ponzu and spicy mayo) at this point as you are waiting for the rice to cool.

Prep your sushi ingredients, get them all in one place so that it is easy to reach as you are manipulating the rolls. Keep a bowl of cool water within hands reach to rinse your fingers off between rolls or else your fingers will get too sticky from the rice.

For a handroll, place your half-sheet nori horizontally oriented on your working surface and take a handful of sticky rice and place it down orienting it like the photo below, making sure you have that top right corner still exposed as naked nori.

Build your desired handroll, we were taught to cut the avocado thinly with a spoon so that we got really delicate, workable slices out of it, as pictured below:

Holding the whole roll in one hand, tuck the top right corner onto the topping and then flip the left side around, it should wrap around about 1 and a half times, the tuck it tightly for a more manageable roll to eat-- and it should stick together from the rice, if it doesn't use a slightly dampened finger to moisten the nori so that it sticks together.

And because my nori was stale, and not very wrapping friendly, I made sushi plates out of my ingredients on this evening for our dinner guest instead...

enjoy! xoxoxoxoxoooo!