Nothing-Raw-Except-The-Veggies Sushi

Nothing-Raw-Except-The-Veggies Sushie (top of the plate and moving clockwise): Sweet Bacon Roll, Octopus Roll, dab of wasabi, Youngstown Roll (prototype), Teriyaki Chicken Roll, Spicy Tuna Salad Roll

I did a lot of prep yesterday, so I when walked into my kitchen this morning, I felt confident that my plan for the day's portable cooool meal was under control, "a walk in the park," so to speak. I had only three things to cook that morning: 1) a simple omelet, 2) some bacon and 3) the sushi rice. Not problem. I poured myself a tall glass of iced coffee with a splash of half and half and headed out to backyard with the dogs.

It was significantly cooler outdoors at 6:00 am--cloudy with the threat of rain. But I didn't think much about it as I sipped my coffee and enjoyed the dogs' company. It was after we came back inside that I realized I might have a problem....


After four days of a record-breaking heat wave, the house had not cooled down, not even a little, over night. All the steam and heat from the previous day's cooking and prepping was still trapped. The kitchen was a convection oven. In fact, I went over to check the oven, certain for a moment that I, or one of my housemates, had left it on overnight. But, no, the oven was not on.

I decided to get to work immediately, before the sun came out. I began with the sushi rice, which I cooked in my handy-dandy rice cooker.

Sushi Rice

The proportions of water and rice are different for sushi rice, as compared to regular or long-grained rice. Here is how I do it.

1. Measure out 1 1/2 cups of raw sushi rice (and make sure it says "sushi" rice, not "glutinous" or "sticky" rice, which is something completely different) into a rice cooker. Rinse the several times with cold water. Drain well. (Note: for the number of sushi rolls I made for this blog, I cooked a double batch of sushi rice.)

2. Add 2 cups of water (I used filtered water) to the rinsed rice, close the lid of the cooker, and start the rice cooking.

3.  It is very IMPORTANT to not let the finished rice sit on a warming settling, or it will become mushy. When the cooker signals that the rice is done, turn it off immediately (or, if you have no "off" setting, as is the case with my rice cooker, unplug it). Open the lid and allow the initial rush of steam to evaporate. Then move the hot rice to a large mixing bowl.

4. Mix together 1/4 cup unseasoned rice vinegar, 1 tablespoon of white sugar, and 1 tablespoon of salt. Stir until the sugar and salt dissolve. (Alternatively, use 1/4 seasoned rice vinegar, which works perfectly fine, in my opinion.)

5. While the cooked rice is still hot, sprinkle 1/2 of the seasoned rice vinegar over the rice and toss to mix well. (I use a wooden spoon because most recipes mention wood, but I have no idea whether a wooden spoon is vitally necessary or simply traditional.) Try not to mash or otherwise brutalize the grains of rice. Sprinkle the second half of the vinegar over the rice and toss again.

6. Cover loosely with plastic wrap, so that the top layer does not dry out, and allow the seasoned rice to cook completely.

Sweet Bacon for Sushi

My nifty idea (at least I thought it was nifty) was to serve today's sushi as brunch, beginning with bacon sushi and egg sushi. The bacon was easy. All I did was buy some very good quality, center-cut, thick-cut, hickory smoked bacon, cut it into sushi-sized pieces, and cook them very slowly in a frying pan.

2-inch pieces of meaty bacon

After they were removed from the frying pan, but before they cooled completely, I drizzled them with real maple syrup.

Drizzling maple syrup on bacon.

How Not to Cook An Omelet

While I was waiting for the rice to cook in the rice cooker, I decided to get started on the chive omelet. I have made Japanese-style omelets successfully many time before. They're a little finicky, but once you get the hang of it, it's fun. What you do is cook very, very thin layers of scrambled egg in a frying pan with very little oil. As each thin layer cooks, you roll it like a long manuscript, so that in the end, you get a roll of light, thinly layered egg. There are a number of YouTube demonstrations, if you want to know how to make a nice Japanese egg roll for sushi.

As you may be guessing from the title of this segment, I made a few unfortunate decisions in the miserable heat of my kitchen. The first mistake was to decide not to stand over a hot stove sweating my ass off whilst patiently waiting for thin layers of egg to cook. The second mistake I made was to decide to bake the omelet in a toaster oven.

I whisked eight eggs together with a bit of sugar, salt, and a handful of carefully snipped fresh clives. As I whisked, the humidity of the kitchen, made worse by the steaming rice cooker and the slowly frying bacon, settled on my forehead, neck and back. Before long, I was sweating through my tee-shirt. I rushed to complete the sushi rice and drizzled the bacon, then poured the omelet concoction into a greased quiche pan. Thinking myself clever, I slipped the now "crustless quiche" into my toaster oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit, set the timer, and left the kitchen.

I set another timer in my room for 20 minutes and I sat down in front of my bedroom fan, in a relatively cooler region of the house, to cool down and to read. But before 20 minutes had gone by, I began to smell something burning.

I went into the kitchen and peeked into the toaster oven to discover that the top of the omelet had puffed up like a balloon, was stuck to the upper heating element, and--not surprisingly--was on fire.

omelet disaster

I let loose some expletives and pulled the plug on the toaster oven, and the fire went out inside. When I opened the little windowed door, the ballooned top of the omelet exhaled like an old balloon, collapsing into something that stank of carbon and looked like a creature from outer space (see above).

To make my morning even "challending," after taking a few photos of the omelet disaster, I set my iPhone down on the kitchen counter in a small pool of bacon grease left behind by the spatula I'd used earlier.

It was not yet 8:00 am. A completed sushi brunch for myself and my northside friends was still a few hours from being completed, but for a moment I couldn't face the task. I seriously considered bagging everything, pulling the shades, and crawling back into bed . . . and turning up the speed on the big oscillating fan.

Instead, I poured myself another tall glass of iced coffee and started cleaning the grease out off the tiny camera lens and the many crevices of my iPhone's case.

Assembling Sushi

Most of the work of making sushi is in the prepping of ingredients. Making the sushi pieces themselves isn't very difficult or time consuming.

For the Sweet Bacon Sushi, I simply made little footballs of sushi rice (nigiri-style sushi), topped each one with a piece of mapled bacon, and belted them to the sushi balls with a strip of nori (dried, toasted seaweed).

Forming a rice ball

Cutting strips of nori to use for "belts"

There is no need to tie the nori belts. Though the belts do not stick to the bacon very well, they do stick to the sushi rice, which keeps the belts from falling off.

Sweet Bacon Sushi

For the remaining sushi, I used the log (maki roll) method. Instructions for how to make maki sushi are on the back of every package of nori that I have ever bought. Some instructions use better English than others, but all of them lean on simple graphics to explain the procedure.

For those of you who live in the Mahoning Valley, Ohio, you can find sushi rice and nori sheets at almost any Giant Eagle. Whole Foods in Cleveland also carries organic nori, which is my personal preference.

To make maki rolls, you'll need a bamboo sushi mat to help form the logs.

Sushi mats can be purchased in the International aisles of many grocery stores (including the Boardman Giant Eagle and Whole Foods in Cleveland) or online.

Start by placing a sheet of nori on the mat.

It's hard to see in the photo, but nori sheets have lines on them, which guide the cook as to where to put the sushi rice. I try to leave a small margin at the bottom and a larger one at the top when I am putting down the sushi rice. You will need to press and move the rice around with your fingers to get it into place.

Nori, sushi rice, and spicy tuna salad.

For the Spicy Tuna Salad Sushi, I mixed a can of albacore tuna with good mayonnaise, snipped fresh chives, and a tablespoon of Thai hot sauce.  Then I made maki rolls out of it.

Begin by rolling the seaweed over on the rice and filling. This is just to get started.

Next, use the bamboo mat to help finishing making the log. Use the mat to press and compact the roll as you go and to make the log uniform in thickness from end to end.

Finally, cut the log into eight individual pieces.

For the Octopus Roll, I used a can of octopus packed in olive oil. I chopped the octopus into smaller pieces and mixed it with a few tablespoons of oil from the can. Along with the octopus "salad," I added long strips of English cucumber to the maki-style roll:

Chopped octopus and cucumber roll

The Teriyaki Chicken Roll included strips of teriyaki chicken breast meat, strips of red bell pepper as well as English cucumber:

Teriyaki Chicken Roll

My brainchild for the meal was a sushi roll with Youngstown flavors. I cooked up cabbage, kielbasa in tomato sauce, and fried Italian-style hot peppers, then attempted to assemble them as sushi.

Originally, I  used the braised cabbage in place of the nori, but soon learned that the cabbage was too thick, too wrinkled, and too watery to do a good job as an outer covering for a maki roll. I also tried drizzling the interior of the maki roll with tomato sauce, which was another disaster; the roll became too loose and the sushi rice no longer stuck together.

In my second attempt, I remembered that it isn't necessary to have an outer covering...

Instead of nori, you can use plastic (in this case a gallon freezer bag, because it works better than cling wrap) to stand in for the nori. (Just be careful not to roll the plastic into the log itself, and you'll be fine.)

kielbasa sausage and fried hot peppers on sushi rice

Youngstown roll (prototype)

After cutting the logs into pieces, I then nestled each roll on a piece of braised cabbage. The result was interesting and delicious, but kept falling apart. Obviously, the Youngstown Roll needs more work. It's charms me, though, that the prototype came out looking like a pale yellow rose with a red center.