Jeni's Yummy Lunchbox Sushi

I've got permission from the lovely Jules to get involved with the food blog. I love food - I eat fairly constantly and like to make everything from scratch. I am not great at following recipes (or any instructions really), but I'll have a good ol' bash.

So I made some looovely sushi the other day, and then had another go today and took photos! At Tesco the other day it was 3 for 2 on 'world foods'. This largely consisted of different types of rice

(oooh, exotic), but also covered the small range of Japanese food they have. I picked up a bamboo rolling mat, some nori wraps and a packet of sushi rice for about £4.

Right, so you start by washing your rice. I used half of the packet, which is 250g. You are supposed to wash it a few times in cold water, but I realised last time that your hands get really cold so I made a strange sieve/washbowl/spoon makeshift


thing to clean the rice. A lot of starchy white stuff came off the rice, but it did that last time too so I wasn't worried. Then you add 330ml cold water to your clean rice and boil bring to the boil with a lid on. That is the same volume of liquid as in a can of coke! Not helpful, but I kept thinking it anyway. Once the water had been brought to the boil you should leave it to simmer for 10 minutes. Then, turn off the heat and let the rice stand for 20 mins. AT NO POINT TAKE THE LID OFF YOUR PAN! I am not sure


why, but the rice packet is very clear about this. Whilst all that was doing, I chopped up some salady bits really thin for putting in the sushi. I know I should be using fish, but what the hey. I used grilled salmon and avocado the other day, and it was great actually. But today I had a lot of salad stuff to use up. Once it was all chopped up I had far too much, and the pic shows actually how much you need for a couple of rolls.



Next, you lay your nori wrap onto the bamboo rolling mat. Its really important that the bottom of the sheet lines up with the bottom of the rolling mat, so that it all sticks together nice and easy. Cover the wrap with the sticky rice after its settled, and then lie your chopped up fillings about a of the way third up. Now comes the tricky bit!



Holding the mat at the bottom, roll upwards to just about cover the chopped up veg. At this point, I am wondering if I laid the nori wrap the wrong way up... should it have been width ways? Anyway. Once you've folded it up like this you need to squish the wrap together really hard. The mat helps you apply lots of pressure, and this is needed so it all sticks together.



Then we keep rolling and squishing up! Roll and squish, roll and squish. At the end it sticks together with the moisture from the rice. If it doesn't, you can dab the nori with water and stick it down. Next, get a nice sharp knife and cut into little circles! And it'll look like the pictures below. Then, I put mine in a little lunchbox and added some wasabi. Lunch treat ahoy!



Whilst I actually gave the lunchbox away (I am lovely, I know), I used up the leftover sticky rice for myself. I added some coconut milk and warmed the rice through to make a nice sweet coconut sticky rice. I then mixed this up with some ripe mango to make my own version of a lovely mango coconut sticky rice thing I had in Thailand!