Back at the start of the summer (where has the time gone ?!), we were offered the chance to try our hand at making sushi, courtesy of Asian snack and drink company, Kelly Loves. Both Juliette and Sophie are huge fans of sushi and frequently buy it on Deliveroo, at the local Chinese restaurant (which has a sushi section) or from the supermarket but I'd never thought of making it ourselves. To be honest, I thought it would be really complicated, both in terms of making it and sourcing the ingredients.
Well, the second part was instantly dealt with. Founded by Kelly Choi, Kelly Loves brings a large selection of tasty snacks and meals typical of the Far East into your home and they sent us a fabulous starter kit, containing everything (except for seafood and vegetables) that we'd need for making sushi, plus some extras. When we unpacked the box, we discovered a sushi mat, a box of sushi rice, sushi nori, wasabi, spicy mayo, fried onions, sushi vinegar, sushi ginger, tofu miso soup, aloe vera drink, Korean rolls meal kit and a bento kit. Wow, where to start ?!
We started off by cooking the rice. The Sushi Rice is described on the box as a "fine short-grain rice as used by our sushi chefs". A box contains 500g which sounded a lot to me, as we'd only have two people eating it, so we cooked half the box. With hindsight, we could have used up a whole box though. While the rice cooked, we peeled and sliced the ingredients that we'd bought to go in the sushi - prawns, smoked salmon, carrots, red pepper, cucumber. Once the rice is cooked, you need to stir through some sushi vinegar - aha, so that's what gives the sushi its special flavour.
I was all ready to start looking up sushi recipes online but the girls pooh-poohed that idea, saying that it was simple as each sushi only had one ingredient, along with the rice. Well, I didn't know that (assuming they are right !). Juliette laid a nori sheet (half of one, in fact) on the rolling mat and topped it with rice.
She added some strips of cucumber. Can you spot where she went wrong? Yep, she laid them the wrong way !
She managed to roll them up quite successfully though, especially for a first attempt. She said they didn't look right because they had the nori on the inside, like a spiral. After chopping them up, the middle section looks great but the ends need a bit more rice to help them hold together.
For the next sushi, Juliette decided to try one with prawns inside and no nori sheet.
I was convinced it would all fall apart but the rolling mat did squash it all together quite successfully. It did crumble slightly when I tried to chop it into pieces (each roll creates about five or six individual sushi pieces) but again, we were quite impressed with the finished creations.
I decided to have a go and - smacks myself on the wrist ! - ignored all the rules and put several different ingredients together (carrot, red pepper and cucumber). The problem that we were encountering was that the more sushi we created, the stickier our mat was getting with rice sticking all over it. I decided to try a new technique, laying a sheet of cellophane over the sushi mat, which worked for rolling but then stuck to the rice when I wanted to chop it.
My attempts at sushi resulted in these completely collapsed dollops on the plate, which had the kids in complete hysterics. We could have tried making more but by this point, we'd used up all the rice. What our sushi (mine in particular) lacked in visual appeal, it certainly made up for in taste and the girls scoffed the lot, declaring it delicious ! Above all, we had great fun and lots of giggles making the sushi and decided that this would be a great activity for teenage sleepovers, providing something fun to do and also food to eat.
The girls munched their way through the sushi as soon as it was made so they didn't need to store it but they loved the Bento box and thought that it would be ideal, not just for sushi but for making cool packed lunches to take to school. The fact that there are two boxes, closed with a wooden lid that is held in place with the elastic strap, gave the girls ideas of making a sandwich/savoury snack plus fruit/dessert options in the other box.
The girls tried the aloe vera drink after making the sushi and loved the fruity, refreshing flavour. We had a good giggle at our less-than-wholly-successful sushi-making but decided that the taste was there and we had enjoyed a fun afternoon together, so that counted as a win ! Let's hope we'll get on better with the Korean rolls !
Disclosure : We received the products in order to share our honest review.
We made Sushi years ago and my youngest had a great time. She loves the stuff but we tend to buy it instead of going to the effort of making it.
ReplyDeleteThis starter kit looks great and has everything you could need.
Making sushi certainly is harder than it looks. x