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California Rolls

How to make California Rolls? Let’s start with the list of ingredients & utensils.

• 2 cups of Japonica Rice (There is no good substitute for this, check this post for more information)
• 4 cups of water
• 1/4 cup of sushi vinegar (You can get this in Asian/Japanese supersmarkets, but if you have troubles finding this -I’ll add a recipe later)
• 2 nori sheets - cut in half (If its full size nori sheets, which is mostly the case, fold it and halve it along the longer side)
• 1 ripe avocado (to check this, press a little with your finger on the skin… if it gives slightly the avocado is ripe, if your finger leaves a mark, it’s too ripe)
• toasted sesame seeds (for a greate visual appeal try to buy black and white sesame seeds, they don’t have to be toasted as you buy them, you can toast them yourself in a frying pan in five minutes easily)
• half a cucumber (don’t peel it, just wash it very well)
• imitation crab sticks (surimi), just buy a package of those, you’ll need about 5
• bamboo sushi rolling mat
• clingfilm

1. Cook the rice using these instructions. At the end of the article she describes how to make sushi rice, follow these instructions as well (when you are about to cook the rice, you do not have to substitute the water with dashi stock, I personally don’t like the smell of dashi stock at all and my sushi rice tastes just fine without it). Note: It is really important that you wash the rice. Many people omit this step but it actually helps giving the rice exactly the texture it needs, not too sticky. Also cooling the sushi rice can be painful but you’ll get used to it and as fancy as it might sound, the blow dryer is a huge help.
If you didn’t find sushi vinegar you’ll find the recipe for it at the end of her article as well.

2. While the rice dries, cooks or rests, cut all the vegetables length wise: Peel the avocado and halve it. Then slice down 5 mm thick stripes from the middle to the edge.
Halve the cucumber lengthwise and remove the seeds, then slice into 5mm thick stripes.
The crab sticks are best halved lengthwise as well.

3. In a frying pan toast the sesame seeds on middle heat and keep stirring them until they are golden brown.

4. Wash your hands carefully and put them under cold water, then let them wet and take about a handful of your prepared sushi rice. Dispense it over the whole norisheet by leaving about a cm space at the bottom. Don’t squeesh the rice; just keep your hands wet, that’s the whole trick to easily work and shape Japanese rice. Don’t put too much rice either, biggest mistake at the start is to put too much rice. You are supposed to still see some places of the norisheet through the rice. Don’t worry about evening out the rice, the bamboo mat’ll take care of that.

Try to always free your hands of the rice starch between each step and after washing them, leave them wet.

5. Now take about a teaspoon of sesame seeds and sprinkle them over the upper half of the rice on the nori sheet. After that grab the nori sheet by the upper and lower corner on the left or the right side and flip it upside down. The rice free area is still at the bottom.

6. Put two stripes of avocado in the middle of the sheet, followed by two and a half of the imitation crab sticks you cut before. Those are placed ABOVE the avocado slices. Just under the avocado slices position two cucumber stripes.

7. Now wet your hands and roll the sheet starting from below as firm as you can without squeeshing it. After having the role in front of you, position the clingfilm over the Sushi roll followed by the bamboo mat. Now gently press the mat with your hands around the roll to make it firm.

8. Remove the clingfilm and the mat and take a sharp knife with a wet blade. Cut the role in six pieces.

8. It’s quite hard to describe the procedure clearly. But luckily there is a video from an experienced Sushi chef, which will clear up a lot of questions you might still have: Check this video, (the video about California Rolls)