There aren't many sushi restaurants in Montana, so most of the time I have to deal with store bought rolls that are lacking in quality and aren't exactly fresh. That all changed at Gift Giving Orgy Day (the day formerly known as Christmas) when Megan got me all of the ingredients I would need to make my own along with rolling mats, recipe books, and an instructional video. Fuck she gives the best gifts. This one probably tops the basket filled with carefully chosen mustard varieties to complement my pre-existing collection.

Anyway, we made two different kinds of sushi tonight to celebrate the weekend, so here's some pictures of how it all went down.

The first type is a normal nori roll featuring traditional ingredients. I just recently found a place in town that offers sushi grade tuna so I thought I'd give it a try. To complement the fish I cooked up some asparagus, which was cooked in a mixture of water and freshly squeezed lemon juice with salt and pepper.


Next up I started preparing the second kind of filling, which is much less traditional but still amazingly good. First I diced up a bunch of celery and green onions.



Then I diced and mixed in pickled ginger along with mashed up surimi (fake crab made with several different fish). Some mayonnaise (sorry, American instead of Japanese as nowhere sells it around here), wasabi and Asian chili sauce rounded it out.



Back to the first kind of roll. It was firm to the touch, the right color, and wasn't frozen, but unfortunately it had a bit of that unpleasantly pungent fish odor. This is the number 1 indicator that it isn't sushi grade and is not safe to eat raw. I made a quick nigri-zushi roll to taste it and make the final decision.



The tuna tasted good raw, but I would be serving these rolls to other people so I decided to err on the side of caution and pan sear it for about a minute on each side. This did give me the benefit of being able to play around with the flavor. I cooked it in lemon, soy sauce, and a dash of salt and pepper.



Here's a picture of the main ingredients for the first kind of roll in their finalized forms.



And then here's the finished stuffing for the reverse nori spicy sarimi roll.



We layed the nori rolls on our sushi mats and covered them with the sushi rice I had made the day before. For anyone who hasn't made this before, you have to use Japanese short grain rice instead of normal rice. Once it's cooked add in rice vinegar and sugar.



Here's a nori roll with a good layer of rice.



And then here's some of the first kind of filling.



This is the finished product (pre-cutting) and man it looks nice!



This is one of Megan making a reverse nori roll. To make this one you need to cover the mat in plastic wrap, cover a roll in rice, and then flip it over and put the fillings on top.



The final product of both types is shown below.



Normally the Japanese would dip their sushi in soy sauce and then eat a piece of pickled ginger afterwords to cleanse the palette, but personally I prefer to put wasabi and ginger on top of my roll and eat all at once.