Making Sushi: The November Daring Cooks Challenge
Saturday, November 14, 2009 at 12:02PM The November 2009 Daring Cooks challenge of making sushi was brought to you by Audax of Audax Artifex and Rose of The Bite Me Kitchen.
This was our first Daring Cooks challenge and I was so excited that it was sushi. Sushi is Dan's very top favorite type of food, I would say he is a sushi fanatic. And the first time that I had sushi was going out to dinner with Dan way back in college when we started dating. We have talked about making sushi at home for years and somehow it became one of those things that we just hadn't gotten around to yet. So this challenge was the perfect excuse to stop procrastinating and to learn how to make one of our favorite foods. We invited over a couple friends for a very interactive dinner party.
All the ingredients were pretty easy to find at the grocery store. One of our friends had worked at a sushi restaurant and contacted them to get the sushi grade fish; it is available at other local markets but this allowed us to get it at a substantially lower price. Even if we had paid the retail price for the fish it would have still been a very inexpensive dinner compared to an equal amount of sushi at a restaurant.
The sushi rice was the first step and we timed our evening so that we would have this ready to go before our friends arrived. We followed the steps exactly but left out the optional dashi kanbu and sake; it turned out to have a very nice flavor and was quite sticky. There are quite a few steps involved with the sushi rice so Dan and I alternated quite a few times as one of us would always be started on a new prep task when the next step was ready. This worked well, as long as you communicate so something doesn't get missed or a timing off.
Once our friends arrived we immediately started making rolls; everyone was so excited to try their hand at making sushi. After we had all made one of the rolls we instinctively started to take stations as if we were running a little restaurant. One was cutting the fish, the other kept the rolls going, one was keeping the veggie bowls filled, and the other slicing the finished rolls. We made the dragon roll, several decorative rolls, and the nigiri sushi pieces. Then we just kept going until we ran out of rice which left us with a few sashimi pieces. Once the final piece of sushi was eaten we all kind of collapsed into a sushi coma.
The combos that we made for rolls (of which I can remember) included:
- California rolls: crab meat, cucumber, avocado, carrot
- Tuna, avocado, cucumber
- Salmon, avocado, asparagus, green onions
- Crab meat, avocado, carrots, cucumber
- Dragon: unagi, avocado, asparagus, cucumber; on outside unagi, avocado, and soy glaze
- Rainbow: asparagus, cucumber, carrots; on outside salmon, red snapper, and tuna
I highly recommend hosting a sushi making dinner party. It was such a fun evening. The perfect blend of interaction, good food, good company, and learning a new skill together.
Dan is already trying to get a sushi night on our menu plan for this next week... This may have created a little monster.
Thank you for such a great challenge, Audix and Rose! For the challenge recipes and details click here.
daring cooks, fish in Dinner 
Reader Comments (8)
WOW what a lovely site you guys have here! I added you to my reader ;) Looks like you had a great time with the sushi and everything is BEAUTIFUL! Mmmm sushi coma - always fun!
Such a beautiful job! Congrats on your first challenge (isn't the first one so exciting?)! The sushi is gorgeous & I love the photos!
Yay I'm so glad you guys joined the Daring Cooks! We had a very similar experience involving friends, food, and the biggest sushi coma I've ever experienced. Looks delish!
Between you and Amy's write-ups, I am dying to have a sushi party of my own! This looks like so much (delicious) fun... now I just need a place big enough to host everyone!
I also had friends over to make this and it was such a fun group project, it wouldn't have been the same without them. Your dragon roll is especially impressive, I love the soy glaze it makes it look fierce. I love this blog by the way, I just started reading it a little while ago.
Wow what lovely photos you have they are so professional. And that dragon roll looks so yummy and juicy. Your nigiri is so fresh and shiny it glem flavour.
Congrats on your 1st challenge well done and kudos to both of you. Cheers from Audax in Australia.
Thank you for your kind comments! This challenge was certainly a lot of fun and we are looking forward to reading about everyone's experiences.
Maggie, we have a small space too. Only two counters actually! So it can be done with a bit of prep work and everyone is understanding and flexible of course.
Cheers
~ tara
Welcome to the DC fold! :)) Great first challenge and such beautiful photos.. way to goo!!