Who doesn’t love tucking into some sushi? It’s fresh, bursting with flavours and best of all, it’s healthy.
But rolling that perfectly beautiful sushi that is not only delicious but also looks tantalising is no mean feat. Which is why on a rainy Wednesday afternoon Sajesh Nair, masterchef at Syn, Taj Deccan, decided to hold a special sushi rolling session for some of their regular guests.
“Sushi is becoming increasingly popular these days and is healthy too. This session is the perfect way to spread awareness about it. People always wonder what goes into a roll and why each sushi tastes so different. Sushi literally means vinegared rice and making the perfect sushi is an art,” he says.
Sushi enthusiasts, all ears for tips and tricks to create that perfect roll, were brimming with questions about the kind of rice and ingredients to use as stuffing for their rolls.
The first step is to get the perfect sticky rice. “The rice quality has to be good and it should be cooked to perfection in a rice cooker. There are three main types of sushi – maki, temaki and nigiri,” says sous chef Asmic Raj, who led the sushi rolling session.
The technique to roll and cut the roll is the most important aspect of making sushi.
The stuffing for a sushi could be anything from mango, cucumber, avocado, tuna, salmon to prawn. The rich flavours of the ingredients are perfectly complemented by some pickled ginger and wasabi on the side.
“Pickled ginger also helps change the palate when one is sampling different types of sushi and the wasabi helps cut the risk of food poisoning since one is eating raw fish,” explains Asmic, holding up a tiny amount of wasabi.
After rolling out a couple of vegetarian and non-vegetarian sushi like the mango maki, kappa (cucumber) maki and futo maki, the chefs invited guests to try their hand at rolling the sushi themselves.
Amidst a lot of enthusiasm, laughter, sips of wine and mocktailssome of the guests did manage to produce decent looking sushi, even as Asmic guided them through the process of making maki (rolled sushi), uramaki (where the rice side of the sushi is on the outside), temaki (conical sushi) and nigiri (where the fish is on top of an oblong rice ball).
Shake Maki
Ingredients
Sushi Rice 100 gm
Mayonnaise 5 gm
Nori Sheet 1/2 nos
Gari (pickled ginger) 10 gm
Wasabi 5 gm
Salmon 40 gm
Sushi Vinegar 10 ml
For sushi rice
Rice vinegar 60 ml
Sugar 40 gm
Salt 10 gm
Method
Take a clean bowl and spread the boiled hot sushi rice. Mix the vinegar in cooked sushi rice along with sugar and salt. Leave this mixture to cool down and ferment.
Once the rice has fermented, form the sushi rice into a ball and place on one end of the nori sheet. Now spread it across the sheet. Place the sheet on a sushi mat, nori sidedown. Place the salmon in middle. Roll the sushi mat, using it to form a cylindrical shape, with all the ingredients inside. Cut the roll into 8 pieces. Arrange it in sushi platter. Serve with Gari and Wasabi.
