Sushi – A vinegared rice dish.

If you like Japanese and Oriental food, if you love seafood, if you want to impress your friends with your complex knowledge of a complicated traditional process, then you should really learn how to make sushi.

Let’s just face it – sushi is not just another dish, it’s a part of the modern culture, right there, between Darth Vader and the Beatles.

Your only excuse not to know how to make sushi is if you are allergic to seafood – and even then, it could be nice of you to prepare it for somebody else.

The first thing you should know is that it’s not immensely complicated.

On the contrary, the base of sushi is the Japanese minimalist tradition, meaning that you won’t need a whole lot of things to prepare it.

You may not be able to make great sushi, but you should be able to accomplish a fairly decent dish from the first attempt (after all, this is what you’ll get in most restaurants anyway).

The second thing you should learn before discussing how to make sushi is that it’s healthy. It has rice, fish and algae – and nothing deep fried anywhere – it has to be one of the healthiest fancy choices available today.

You will need a cutting board and a sharp knife – two vital tools in this process.

If you’ve never sliced fish before, maybe you should practice before getting into this!

You will also need rice, rice vinegar, fish/seafood/vegetables (or all of them), Nori seaweed, sugar, wasabi (Japanese horseradish sauce), soy sauce and ginger (not the root, but a pickled ginger, sliced thinly, also called gari).

If you’re already confused, don’t worry – you will find all of them in an Asian store or in any major supermarket, usually all these ingredients are together on the same shelf.

Start by cooking the rice for the sushi , let it cool off and add the vinegar.

Now slice the fish thinly (no more than 3 mm) – as said before, you need a really sharp knife and a lot of practice, otherwise you’ll just make a mess.

If you don’t feel up to it yet, start by making shrimp sushi and move to the fish later on.

Put a little wasabi on the fish – but do taste it first! It’s hot – meaning, really, really hot. (If you were disappointed to see how much you had to pay for such a small tube now you probably understand why – you don’t need a lot of the stuff anyway).

Put the seaweed on a bamboo rolling mat, also called a Makisu, for specialists.

For amateurs, you can use a plastic sheet instead.

Spread the rice on the seaweed evenly, leaving about an inch uncovered, at one end.

Don’t use too much rice – in fact, you should be able to see the seaweed sheet under it.

Remember that you’ll end up with more than one layer, when you roll them, and you still need to be able to taste everything else in one bite.

Now put the fish (or whatever your choice was) on the rice, at one end of the seaweed sheet (the opposite end to the one left uncovered).

Roll slowly, making sure the fish doesn’t fall out. Cut the roll in pieces, as large as you would like them. Use a wet, sharp knife, and keep it wet, otherwise the rice will stick to it.

Serve your home made sushi with soy sauce for dipping, and gari for cleaning the mouth and the taste buds between bites.

Enjoy!