Pronounced (cal-vin-uh-lee-bru)

What’s up my good people, I hope today is treating you well. With my beautiful wife out of town for wedding “stuff” I had to fend for myself last night for dinner. After work, my original plan was to go home, walk my pup, then go over to a sushi joint down the street. However, after a little consideration, I decided to man up and make the sushi myself. I don’t know if anyone has ever checked my references in the field of culinary arts, but Christina will tell you the only thing I’m good for is breakfast (I can throw together some pancakes, bacon, eggs, and sausage like you wouldn’t believe). It was a bit of a learning curve, but for my first time, it wasn’t too bad. I didn’t have to throw away anything (which says a lot because I lost a lot of good pancakes in the process of perfecting my flip).

I went over to Mitsuwa out here in Costa Mesa, it’s a fine Japanese market with lots and lots of goodies. My shopping list consisted of:

• Mussels
• Sushi rice
• Salmon
• Eel
• Seaweed
• Sushi vinegar
• Wasabi
• Fake crab
• Avacado
• Roasted sesame seeds
• Soy sauce

I started off with my appetizers, a yummy batch of Mussels. I put a little bit of butter, salt, pepper, and I let those things sit on 375º for about 20 minutes. Ahh, amazing… just like in the restaurant. I microwaved my rice twice (about 5 minutes each time), and let it sit for a while to cool. I put my eel in the oven at 350º for about 20 minutes and then started putting it all together. Crab, eel, salmon and avocado. I don’t know what you call that kind of roll but it was pretty good. Came out kind of fat and the presentation wasn’t too nice on the eyes, but for my first time, I think it tasted wonderful. I set out to make sushi, and that’s exactly what I did =)

What did I learn?

• Less is is more
  Putting too much in your roll will call for a fat roll which is very hard to A. Roll, and B. eat. Had I used half as much crab and salmon, it would have been a better/cleaner eating experience
• Let the rice finish cooking before starting ANYTHING else
  Nothing like having all your food ready, but waiting on the rice to cool. I ended up with steamy soft seaweed =(
• Use a big bowl/container to cool your rice
  My rice could have cooled a lot faster had I moved it from the old container, and put it in something larger. Leaving it in the same container it was cooked in took forever to cool.
• Pre cut all of your pieces before hand
  Seems like a no brainer right? I packed on all my rice, and then decided it was time to cut up the salmon, eel, and crab. Had those pieces been ready, things would have went a lot smoother.
• Find a remedy for keeping sticky rice off your fingers
  I still haven’t quite figured this one out yet. That was probably the most difficult thing to manage. It was hard to spread the rice over the seaweed because it kept sticking to my fingers. Can someone say annoying??

With all that said, I’ll leave you with some pictures.

photos by jamescalvin