Rollin' out the sushi Chan-style.

Jehoshaphat (until writing this post I realize I didn't actually know how to spell Jehoshaphat properly off the top of my head) was an interesting king.  My family and I are reading through the Bible (in three years, not one...yeah, I know, it's a long time.  Us Chans gotta set our own pace, though - and we've successfully been making it through our second year!), and we're currently reading through 2 Kings, but I noticed in today's reading that the author mentions that Jehoshaphat asks for a prophet "through whom we may inquire of the LORD" before making a huge decision of going into battle.  I remembered he said that previously in 1 Kings, and when I looked back for it, I found that he actually does that two other times.

Dang.  He really wants to make sure he is doing what is right in the eyes of the Lord.

It's something simple I picked up on, but how many times do we often make decisions without "inquiring of the Lord"?  No wonder why Jehoshaphat's considered a good king of Judah.  And good kings are a rare find in the Old Testament.

On a different note, I finally finished reading Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes yesterday.  It's a good book.  Really depressing, but written really well.  It got slow for me right smack in the middle, but I pushed my way through it.  I got used to McCourt's style of writing after a while.  I'm glad I got to finish it.  I was supposed to finish it for my Creative Nonfiction class from Fall semester last year, but didn't get a chance to (shh...don't tell!).  Hm...now I want to look back at it to analyze the techniques and style a little more.  I'm not one of those English majors that can poke and prod too much at the literary aspects of a book while reading.  I like to just read through and perform an autopsy on it later.

Also, I made sushi last night.  Now, it's not your normal sushi with raw fish, or like California rolls or kim bap.  This is the sushi I grew up with in my house - Fay Chan style.  Essentially, you can put whatever you want in a  sushi roll, and this is how my mom taught me.  

Apparently I read my mom's recipe wrong.  I thought it said that I needed to make six cups of cooked sushi rice and that the vinegar dressing was only for two cups of uncooked sushi rice, so I tripled the recipe.  Which was the correct ratio, but when my mom came home, she looked at my bowl of rice and said, "That's just two cups of rice?"  Oops.  Let's just say...I had to make a lot of sushi.

From dull sushi rice to shiny sushi rice!

I do not enjoy using my mom's mandoline slicer thing.  I cannot julienne carrots to save my life.  I cut up strips of scrambled eggs, cucumbers, and julienned carrots for the sushi filling.  These are what my mom has always used whenever she's made sushi as I was growing up.  I was going to slice up some zucchini just for the heck of it (my touch of experimentation/novelty), but got so fed up with julienning the carrots that I forgot about the zucchini.  Oh well!

The carrots may look okay in the picture,
but they really are terrible when you look closer

I always forget if the shiny side of the nori (Japanese seaweed) should be face up or down.  I had to look it up on my computer (shh!) and found out that it's the shiny side up, and the lines should be horizontal.  

Getting ready to roll

Don't forget to have a cup of water on hand when you're preparing to roll sushi.  It gets really annoying when you have all this rice sticking to your fingers.  

When put rice on the nori, I use the rice paddle and try to put a little at a time and spread it out as evenly as possible across the whole nori.  I also try to make sure there is rice on the left, right, and bottom edges because I hate when the end pieces have so little rice in them.  After I lay down the rice, I lay out the strips of egg, cucumber and julienned (I probably made that word up) carrots at the bottom.  The bottom edge of your nori should be at the bottom edge of the bamboo sheet thing (I didn't exactly do that in this picture).  The bamboo sheet thing helps roll the sushi better and evenly.  I cover it in plastic wrap so the bamboo stays clean.

And...roll!

The first part of the roll is probably the most important.  You don't want to make it too tight, but you have to press it enough so that the rice stays firm and doesn't fall apart when you cut the rolls.  My mom taught me to leave the top edge empty of rice, so that it's a little easier to seal the roll with a little water (I needed both hands for that so I couldn't take a picture of me actually sealing the roll).  She says if you put rice all the way to the top edge, it's harder for the seaweed to stick and gets all messy and falls apart when you cut it.  Just use two fingers to dip into your cup of water and run your fingers along the fat part of the roll on the nori.  And then seal it like glue!

I'm not the greatest at cutting the rolls

When my mom taught me how to make sushi when I was younger, she also told me that when I was done sealing the roll, to set it aside with the sealed edge side down, so that the weight of the roll could help keep the roll sealed.  I'd start making the second roll before cutting the first one.

To cut the sushi, I found a tall glass and filled it with water.  I thought I was supposed to use a cleaver, but the weight of the cleaver was too heavy and smushed the roll too easily, so I just switched to a regular knife.  Make sure it's sharp, though.  I had to get the hang of cutting the sushi, though, because it's tricky to figure out how gentle or firm to hold the roll (too light and it won't cut, too much and you'll squish), and then how much to saw or slice right through.  I think I figured out to saw slightly at the top and then try to just cut smoothly halfway through so that the filling doesn't cut unevenly or mess up the rest of the roll.  I also didn't cut from one end of the roll to the other.  I kept cutting halves so that the weight of the roll is always even on both sides of the knife when you cut.

Don't forget to dip your knife in the water after every cut so that the rice doesn't stick to it!  It makes it harder to cut if your knife is all sticky, and you can really mess up cutting the roll.

Yummm!

It was kind of gross cleaning the bento boxes my mom had.  She keeps them on a shelf in our living room above the piano, so a layer of dust had collected on the cover that I had to clean before putting food inside.  And I definitely made too much sushi.  There are three bento box layers, and two of them I had to fill with two layers!

My mom had made chicken teriyaki the night before on the George Foreman grill because we were supposed to have sushi on Saturday night but no one was going to be home.  So we broke out the chicken teriyaki, Sam made some bok choy because I was taking forever making the sushi, and dished out the pickled ginger and wasabi.

And if you ever wonder why sushi is so expensive, it's not just about the ingredients - I spent all afternoon in the dense humidity making those things.  Hours.  They are definitely a lot of work for like, one bite of food...and they're gone so quickly!  Well, except this time because I made so many...

I told Charles I made sushi and he's like, "Did you actually make them with raw fish, or are they California rolls?" and when I told him they were just veggie ones, he said, "Gross!!"

Charles, vegetables are good for you.  And I know you hate cucumbers (though I can't understand why, they're so refreshing, especially on summer days like these), but you're not getting any sushi out there in Philly anyway, so chill out buddy.  More sushi for the rest of us!