We've been buying sushi rolls from this Korean lady down the street. We also had the thought that making sushi rolls would be great fun. We knew that making sushi rolls is something that needs loads of practice and that you need to know the proper techniques. Enter YouTube. You can find hundreds of videos on how to roll the sushi and how to make the all important rice. We found a video by Sushi Monsters that gave a recipe for making the rice. For me, it was too mayonaise-ish. The rice vinegar was too much. It made the rice almost runny instead of firm and sticky...which it already was to a large degree due to the fact that we bought rice especially for sushi.
Besides the fact that our next batch will have to be different with regards to vinegar to rice ratio, we'll also have to keep practicing on the rolling. First we put too much rice and then we realised that if the rice was firmer we could roll these little delights with the rice side out like they did on YouTube. This would make it much easier since the half sheets of nori really didn't hold much.
Finally, the ingredients we used (on my girlfriend's demand) were imitation crab strips and cucumber strips. She also insisted on adding mayo. I know! Gross! Though she only put a little bit, I think the mayo taste she had discerned in the sushi rolls was the rice, vinegar and sugar mixture. Not actual mayo. But anywho... Next time we need something like julienned carrots for a bit of bite in addition to more assertive ingredients. But with a good bowl of wasabi and soy sauce mixture we managed to make the rolls taste relatively close to the real thing. This is certainly an art though.
Oh and I forgot to say that you really need a sharp knife to cut through these little buggers. They tend to want to squash down if you have to apply too much pressure to cut them into bite sized pieces.
