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Well, I don't have pictures for it, but okay.
VEGETARIAN RAINBOW SUSHI:
INGREDIENTS:
6-7 Nori/Gim (dried seaweed paper, they're usually in 8x9 sheets)
1/2 cup of seasoned rice vinegar
2 cups of dry rice (short grain is technically better, but you can make long grain work)
Enough water to properly cook your rice, plus a few tablespoons extra.
Canned beets, sliced into shoestring (NOT PICKLED)
Carrot, sliced the same way
Cucumber, sliced the same way
1 egg, scrambled and cooked into a thin sheet. Cut into strips
cream cheese, sliced into thin strips. Really thin.
ESTIMATED COST OF INGREDIENTS: $6
COST PER SERVING (1 roll): $1 (less, if you get a seventh roll out of it)
DIRECTIONS
1: Cook your rice. Different kinds of rice require different cooking methods, so I've listed one for short grain (technically more correct), and long grain (which I used, because I am too cheap to pay two or three times as much for stickier rice.)
SHORT GRAIN COOKING METHOD:
Put your rice into a bowl and wash it. Pour cold water (as cold as you can tolerate) into the bowl and shuffle the rice around until the water is all cloudy, due to rice mill that is stuck on the outside of the rice. Strain the water out. repeat until the water runs clear.
Put your rice in a pan with the amount of water listed on the package, plus a little bit extra to account for evaporation, and bring it to a boil for about 30 seconds.
Stir it to make sure that none is getting scorched on the bottom, and then turn the heat down to low and put a lid on it. Let it sit that way about 15 minutes.
Then remove the pan from the heat, and let it sit (still closed) for another 10.
After THAT, open the lid and put it into a wide bowl, and fluff the rice with a spatula.
LONG GRAIN COOKING METHOD:
What I am going to tell you to do is usually a no-no in cooking long grain rice. But fuck it. It turns out all grainy and tough in the sushi if you don't.
Skip washing and drop the rice into the pot with your water.
Bring to a boil, uncovered. Let it boil for about 30 seconds, and stir.
Turn it to low, and put the lid on it, but stir it 3 or 4 times over the course of 20 minutes.
The last time you stir it, and it looks like the water's gone (your rice will probably be a little bit mushy looking from early stirring), try tipping the pot to see if any water drips out from underneath the rice. If not, then pull it off of the heat and let it sit (covered) for another 5-10 minutes.
Put your rice into a wide bowl, and fluff it with a spatula. It will be much stickier than long grain rice usually is, but this is intentional to make it more tender for the sushi.
2: Season the rice by gradually adding your rice vinegar (1/2 cup for every 5-6 cups of rice). Fold and stir until the vinegar is evenly distributed through the rice, and it all looks kind of shiny. Taste test a small piece. If you think it needs to be a bit more heavily seasoned (more likely if you wound up with 6 cups of long grain), then add an extra tablespoon of vinegar. Let the rice cool down to room temperature.
3: if you don't have a sushi mat, you'll need to kind of make one. Layer 3-4 pieces of plastic wrap on top of each other in a perpendicular pattern, and fold the edges across the main surface into a mat that's bigger than your nori. Don't worry about tiny wrinkles and crinkles in the plastic wrap (they WILL happen), they can actually add more durability to your mat. Get a cup of water to dip your fingers in so that you don't end up with rice cemented to your hands for all eternity.
4: Lay your seaweed paper out on your mat. Dip your fingers in the water. Put a handful of rice onto the nori, spreading it to cover the edge closest to you, and the sides, but leave the farthest 2 inches (5 cm) away from you uncovered. Your rice layer should be relatively thin. Likely no more than 1/4 inch thick.
5: Dip your fingers in the water again to keep stuff from sticking. Press some grooves into your rice, about 1 inch away from the closest edge, making long horizontal stripes across the rice. This will be to hold your filling in place. Make 4 grooves.
6: Place your filling onto the rice: A stripe of the beets, a stripe of the carrots, a stripe of the egg, and a stripe of the cucumber. Lay the cream cheese strips on top of the egg, or wherever you can get them so that it looks like they'll end up in the middle. The filling should only take up about 2 to 2.5 inches of space in this horizontal form, and be mostly flat. Your single cream cheese stripe should be no wider than a typical cheap drinking straw. You really don't want to overfill the rolls.
7: Make it into a roll. Wash your hands off, and make sure that your nori hasn't shifted while you were filling it. Once it's straightened onto the mat, lift the closest edge of the mat with your thumbs, and holding the filling in place with your other fingertips, roll the edge of the nori up over the fillings and against the rice on the other side of the fillings.
Press it firmly into the tube you want while rolling it to the end of the rice.
Before you roll it over completely onto the uncovered nori, dip your fingers in water again, and draw a stripe of water on it, and then immediately finish rolling it over.
Compress it into the round roll a couple more times (roll it around inside of the mat).
8: Cut it into slices. with the roll seam-side-down, take a non-serrated knife, and just slice into chunks (you'll probably get about 6 pretty slices and the two end pieces). If you pressed the roll properly while you were rolling it, it will be easy to cut it into clean slices. If not, your filling will probably start coming out and your rice might even start to squeeze loose from the nori.
9: Taste the rainbow, motherfuckers.
ASIAN-ESQUE COLORFUL VEGETABLE SOUP
INGREDIENTS:
FULL BATCH:
1 can of sliced or shoestring beets (not pickled)
2 cups of water
1 regular cucumber, sliced thin
1 carrot, sliced thin
2 tablespoons miso
3-4 cloves of garlic
2 green onions, chopped
1 tsp salt
Optional: 4oz pork, sliced thin. Whatever cut you prefer.
1 egg Japanese-style omelette
SMALL BATCH:
leftovers from making above sushi (no cream cheese)
1 Tablespoon of miso
2 cloves of garlic,
1 green onion
1tsp salt.
Pork is still optional.
ESTIMATED COST OF INGREDIENTS: $3 without pork.
Mix all required ingredients into a soup pot, using all red juice in the can of beets. This will give the broth the color.
If using pork, add it now as well.
Set on high to bring to a boil for about 10 minutes, or until the carrots are tender, but not mushy (don't worry, this is plenty of time for the pork to be done cooking). Turn heat to lowest setting until ready to serve.
If you are using the omelette, slice into strips and add on top, along with some raw cucumber slices upon serving. (this doesn't add much flavor, it just boosts the protein content a little and makes it pretty)
Serve with seasoned vinegar rice (sushi rice) for intended full flavor combination.
Makes about 5 bowls of soup.
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