Cooking Lessons - Sushi Making

The only thing that I find remotely appealing about sushi is the making of it. Making sushi, I imagine it involves a certain degree of precision. I am a perfectionist and so, visually, sushi appeals to me. Those little rolls of fish, rice and seaweed are like little rolls of perfection. Would I ever eat it? No. Would I taste it? No. But would I like to learn how they make them? Yes.

Cooking lessons in sushi making is something that I would thoroughly enjoy. I think that I would find a great deal of satisfaction when, after rolling up all the ingredients, I slice it and discover that perfect fishy pattern inside. I would then have to arrange all these little rolls beautifully on a plate with some soy sauce and wasabi on the side – oh, the whole process would satisfy every aspect of my slightly OCD personality.

Sushi is described as a roll of fish or sea food with rice wrapped in nori (seaweed). You get two types of Sushi - Futomaki, which is bigger and usually contains two or more different fillings and then you get Hosomaki, which is smaller and contains only one filling, usually fish or seafood, but you could also just use one kind of vegetable. I am beginning to see how easy sushi making can be and how easy it would be to make non-fishy sushi (kind of defeats the purpose, I know) but then I could at least eat my beautiful creation and gain some taste satisfaction as well.

I think the essential item is a bamboo mat (which you place everything onto) but an alternative to the nori could be vine leaves or even spinach or spinach lasagne layers (once they have been cooked). Almost all ingredients could be replaced – instead of rice you could use cous cous or good ol’ fashioned South African pap and instead of fish and sea food you could use vegetables, avocado, chicken, soy mince…the possibilities are endless when making sushi at home...I do realise that it might no longer be considered sushi after all the changes.

Doing cooking lessons in sushi making, I assume, would be more for the person who intends on using the normal ingredients but I think that I will still enjoy the process even if I am not actually going to eat it. And I will enjoy watching the smiles appear on the faces of the people who devour my deliciously flawless little rolls of perfection.