My Makeup Blog's Guide to Making California Rolls

Hi ladies,

Happy Friday! I hope the week has gone well for you. Lately, I've been craving sushi a whole lot and it is hard to find decent sushi at decent price in my town. Also, it takes more than a roll of sushi to quench my craving so I set my foot out to make my own stuff. With the lack of sushi-grade salmon or tuna in the market, I decided to roll up some California rolls and call it a good day. Believe it or not, making sushi is not that difficult once you get the basics nailed down.

And while you're wondering why we have this post today because this is a beauty blog, the reason is I do believe in the benefit of eating well. Of all the types of sushi, California rolls are low in fat but contain good fat, packed with vegetables, and if done right, are low in calories. Also, it does not cost much to make some decent California rolls.

Ingredients:

• sushi rice: cook 3 cups of sushi rice; while rice is cooking, combined 1/3 cup rice vinegar, 1 tablespoon sugar, and 1 teaspoon salt. When rice is done cooking, combined the vinegar mixture with rice in a big bowl and wait for it to cool.
• roasted seaweeds (nori);
  
• 1 medium avocado, sliced into wedges;
• 1 cucumber, remove seeds, and slice into strips: you do not want too thick or too thin slices;
• 1 carrot, peeled and sliced into strips;
• imitation crab meat sticks or cooked shrimps;
• 2 eggs beaten together to make an omelet, then sliced;
  
• optional: light mayonnaise mixed with wasabi. I prefer them separately because I eat more wasabi than mayo but that's just my preference;
• sesame seeds to season.

The nori brand I use is called Tokyo Sushihane and it's pretty good.
It's ~$2 for 10 sheets

Step 1: using a spoon, spread sushi rice on top of nori, leave 1/2 inch at the end.
You can sprinkle sesame seeds if you like it.
You need a sushi mat to help you roll, it's around 3 dollars and you can find in most Asian stores.

Step 2: add all the toppings as followed:
a stripe of wasabi+mayo, cucumber, carrot sticks, egg and avocado slices, and shrimps.

Step 3: use the mat as a guide to roll, apply some pressure but not too much. You don't want your sushi roll to break!

The roll should look like this after step 3

Step 4: cutting the roll into pieces

This step is the hardest one of the whole sushi-making process. In order to cut the perfect pieces, you need to have a very sharp knife. Since sushi rice tends to stick to the knife, having a piece of paper towel and a bowl of vinegar water to rinse the knife is necessary. Just add some vinegar to water and dip your knife in the bowl between slices.

To cut the roll, first you cut it in half, then cut into 6 pieces for the small roll. Discard the ends whatever way you like (mine is to the stomach!)

The end result should look like this

Serve your sushi with some pickled ginger, wasabi, and soy sauce. Fresh sushi tastes a whole lot better than those sold at the grocery store. I am sure they taste better as well! After you are familiar to the rolling and cutting part, you can advance to the more expensive fish cuts or eels. If you have friends over, arranging a sushi station is also fun as it perks up people's creativity.

That's all, folks! I hope you'll have a great weekend and go ahead, make some sushi!

With love,
Your Makeup Blogger

P.S: If you like my blog, please subscribe to my feed. Thanks a lot!