I love Japanese food and I have always wanted to give it a go myself so when I found a sushi kit, I HAD to try it :)
So want to know how to make maki? There's a knack to it, that's for sure!
In my kit I received a bamboo rolling mat, 150g dry sushi rice in a bag, two sheets of nori (seaweed sheets) and 30ml rice vinegar.
First of all you have to prepare the rice. To do this, soak the rice (still inside the bag) in a medium-sized pan of water. Bring it to the boil and simmer on a low heat with the lid on for 11 minutes. After this time, drain the water and return the rice (yep, still inside the bag) to the pan and replace the lid and leave to steam for 25-30 minutes.
In the meantime, prepare your filling. I cut strips of cucumber to 1-2cm thickness and to the width of the nori sheet. You can also use carrot, avocado or any number of other fillings!
Once the rice has cooked, carefully remove the rice from the bag and into a large bowl. Be careful though, the rice will be very hot! Stir in the rice vinegar and leave until the rice is cool enough to handle. Mine was fine after a few minutes.
Now for the messy part! Roll out your bamboo rolling mat and place a sheet of nori on top. Spoon half of the rice onto the nori, evenly spreading it across the sheet but leaving a gap of about 1 cm at each end so you can seal the roll.
Then, and take your time over this part, start rolling the mat away from you, bit by bit, shaping the roll as you go.
Eventually you should end up with something resembling this...
Make sure the end of the nori is pressed into the roll, sealing it by running a little water along the inside edge and pressing into the join with the mat.
Repeat with the rest of the ingredients to make your second roll. Next, put your rolls onto a dry wooden chopping board and with a sharp slightly dampened knife chop them in half. Then take each half and cut it into four pieces. Et voila! Well, practice makes perfect ;)
