Before we became veggers, my absolute, hands-down, favorite, drive-an-hour-to-get-it food was sushi.
After becoming a vegger (not to mention being freaked out by #1) the amounts of ocean life killed by fishing and harvesting stuff off of the ocean floor and #2) creepy chemicals in the water now that mercury and other such nasty things are through the roof,) I mourned the loss of being able to enjoy my favorite food.
Then I discovered that avocado, in a sushi roll, has a consistency as nice as the finest-grade fish.
Just recently I've begun to make sushi for T and I at home - it really is easy, and we use quinoa instead, which is packed with all types of good-for-you stuff, much more than plain bleached sushi rice.
True, quinoa doesn't stick together very easily, but it's worth it in my opinion for the taste and health upgrade...
Ok, so on to the recipe:
What You'll Need:
- White Quinoa. I made two cups which turned out to be much more than I needed to make two sushi rolls. One cup should be fine, uncooked. Usually cooking quinoa calls for about 1 part quinoa to 1.5 parts water, but I added about another quarter cup of water to make the quinoa softer and more squishy than normal (so it would roll better.)
- Two Nori Sheets. I used toasted nori for the batch I'm about to show you here, but some raw nori sheets I ordered arrived in the mail yesterday and I look forward to using it instead.
- A Sushi Rolling Mat. You can get these at nearly any grocery store these days, on the ethnic food aisle with the other asian-type foods.
- Veggies for the middle of the roll. For these rolls, I used mushrooms, carrots, and spinach. You can really go wild here, putting in whatever you like. The interesting thing is how little you actually need compared to how full you are after eating. I used two baby carrots and two mushrooms, and had some left over. I couldn't have used more than ten baby spinach leaves, if that. Fun things to do in the future would be to maybe marinate mushrooms, use marinated tempeh, etc.
- Sushi Rice Vinegar. You can find this where you found the rolling mat. Pretty inexpensive and lasts for awhile - but check the ingredients and make sure you get one with natural sweeteners rather than the ones we all know are poison...
- Soy Sauce. We like the raw kinds, but don't always use them because they aren't always available. Use what you can find. :)
What You'll Do:
-
Cook Your Quinoa. Again, I used a little more water than I ordinarily would so that the quinoa ended up soft and fluffy. I used our rice cooker (possibly the best $50 we've spent when it comes to kitchen appliances, rivaling the
Healthy Juicer.)
- While the quinoa is still warm, combine it with the sushi rice vinegar by putting some quinoa into a bowl and pouring sushi rice vinegar over it while gently folding the quinoa to coat it. Once enough vinegar is in there to coat the quinoa but not to leave a puddle on the bottom of your bowl, cover the bowl with a damp paper or cloth towel until the quinoa cools. You can't work with warm quinoa - it just doesn't do very well, and the vinegar will alter the quinoa to make it stickier and easier to roll as it cools. The damp covering is to prevent too much evaporation - you want the quinoa to be fluffy, moist, and sticky.
- After or as your quinoa cools, chop your veggies into thin strips. This will make the rolls, well, rollable.
- Place your nori sheet on the rolling mat, so the rectangle of both the nori and the mat are vertical, with one of the short ends facing you. Make sure the mat is laying so you can roll it with both of your hands (so the lines of the wood run horizontally.
- Spread the quinoa about a half inch thick on the nori sheet, leaving a margin along each edge of 1/2 to 1 inch. Then layer a layered strip of veggies along the side nearest you, still leaving a small margin of nori.
- Begin to roll the mat. This is the trickiest part. First fold the nori around the vegetables, then keep rolling. The quinoa will move around and firm, even pressure will be difficult to keep at first (which the mat really helps with by the way,) but you'll get better at it each time. You want to be pressing the gooey, soft quinoa pieces together so the roll is pretty solid, but you also don't want to press all of the quinoa out of the far edge.
- When you've reached the end margin of the nori, dampen that edge by dipping your finger in water and then continue rolling until the roll is sealed. Then you'll hold on to the roll, covered completely in the rolling mat, and squeeze it for a second for everything to finally get a last chance to set.
- Remove the roll from the rolling mat, and cut it into pieces. Be careful with edge pieces because nori likes to fall out - there isn't all that much to be done about it, and you'll have less fall as you make more rolls.
- Dip each piece in a little soy sauce before you eat it, and enjoy! You can also garnish with ginger and/or wasabe.
