Sushi in Mount Shasta

Sometime when I was in high school, my family started making sushi for Thanksgiving. My parents didn’t like turkey, so our Thanksgivings were more or less being played by ear anyway. It wasn’t a big adjustment, but it was a start of a tradition. When it started I was a vegan, which lasted a little over two years until I went back to lacto-ovo vegetarian, so I have a hard time remembering what fish was present at the table. I know they had tuna. I know they didn’t have cream cheese.

When Sophia and I were brainstorming what to put in our homemade sushi rolls a few weeks ago, she mentioned cream cheese because she was going to pair it with imitation crab, and the way the dominos fell in my head resulted in a declaration that I should make an abomination sushi roll. Because somehow, over the years, I internalized cream cheese being a Western phenomenon and therefore not authentic to the Real Sushi Experience. Moreover, I internalized it as something my parents must frown upon in all its lack of authenticity. But my parents also frown upon cake mixes* and Starbucks (the “foofy” bar drinks are weak with too much milk, etc.)… so… life.

When you buy your produce,
do have your avocados inspected by a two-year-old

The abomination sushi roll originally came in the spirit of haha, I’m going to exploit our shared experience on the internet anyway, so wouldn’t it be funny if I made something that in the context of my upbringing is so outlandishly low brow. (I want bonus points for not being able to bring myself to put in tomatoes or Goldfish crackers.) It ended up being one of the best things I threw caution into the wind for. But we’ll talk about my abomination sushi roll later, after I narrate the Mount Shasta sushi experience.

Okay, first of all, sushi rice is a bitch.

One of the less bitchy steps is rinsing it before you cook it. We (Sophia and I) made sushi again two nights later without rinsing the rice and we think rinsing the rice made a difference. We didn’t soak the rice on either occasion. If you’re making sushi and contemplating whether or not to soak the rice before cooking it, judging by the lost glutinousness of the unrinsed rice, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to take the time to soak the rice too. I think the recipe has you do it for, like, thirty minutes.

Once the calrose rice is cooked, it needs to be emptied into a large bowl. This bowl is preferably wooden (my family always uses a huge wooden salad bowl), but porcelain, like we used in Mount Shasta, is fine too. This bowl just can’t be metal. The rice goes into this non-metal bowl and one person takes a rice paddle and carefully, as to not moosh it, tosses the rice. While tossing the rice, a vinegar/sugar solution is drizzled in gradually. Person One keeps tossing not just until the vinegar/sugar solution is evenly distributed, but until the rice is cool. Fact: that takes a while, even with the second person. The second person stands over the bowl and fans the rice while Person One tosses it, which expedites the process, I’m sure, but it still takes forever and everyone’s arms will feel like they’re going to fall off unless they’ve got the upper arm strength of the Hulk (…or someone who makes sushi on a regular basis…) which is no one I know (actually, my brother might suffice, since he joined the army, but I’m realizing now he hasn’t had the opportunity to come home for Thanksgiving since he joined the army) (some people capitalize “army”. I don’t. Sue me).

Where were we?

Oh. That sushi rice is a bitch.

In my family, eventually Person Two is given a Zippi fan to hold over the rice as opposed to manually fanning with a magazine or whatever, but arms still get tired. In Mount Shasta, Sophia, Jeff, and I were making sushi in the summer. It was hot. They were toddler-lagged. I was train-lagged. After starting the tossing process it wasn’t long before I said, “Fuck this,” and, as I am wont to do with most of my problems, stuck it in the refrigerator and hoped it would solve itself.
And nothing bad happened! Mazel tov!

Every fifteen minutes or so, I would open the refrigerator and toss the rice. I don’t know how much of a difference that made for the rice itself, but I think it made one. Maybe the hope that it did comes from an unconscious attempt to alleviate some of the guilt of shirking the regular, more labor-intensive sushi protocol I’m used to.

One of the cool things (ha… temperature) about putting the sushi rice in the refrigerator is that it freed up more hands to prepare ingredients. Due to my vegetarianism and Sophia’s pre-existing condition, no raw fish was prepared. But cream cheese was present (DUN DUN DUN…)

Pacifier: optional.

The other thing to keep in mind about sushi rice being a bitch is that it’s worth it and the rolling is easier. This is true at least judging by my experience, but then again, it’s not like I’ve attempted an inside-out roll.

HOW TO ROLL SUSHI (featuring Sophia’s hands)

1) Lay out a piece of nori on a sushi mat. I think Alton Brown specified glossy side down instead of up, but if you can’t tell which side is the glossy one because you’re drunk, that’s okay. You’re my hero. I’ll see you in the ER.

Um… yeah, piece of nori on the sushi mat. Wet your fingers in a bowl of water, which you have out in front of you because you’re prepared, and gently smoosh rice onto the nori. Not all the way out to the edges. You want maybe ¼ inch margin on all sides.

Sophia wanted me to make sure y’all knew that any dirt or stain you see under
or around her fingernails can be attributed to neglecting to wear gloves during a
tie-dyeing session. When I told her that I couldn’t see anything, she told me she
could also add that she’s crazy.
I’m adding that she’s one of the most non-crazy, level-headed people I know.

2) Arrange what you want in your sushi roll on the edge of the nori that’s closest to you. In Sophia’s case, she had cream cheese, smoked salmon and cucumber. Ultimately, I think she also ended up with avocado. Don’t over stuff it. If you do over stuff it, that’s okay, too. Not because it’s advisable, but because sometimes it’s okay to make mistakes. I dare you to use that in a pickup line.

3) Now that it’s got everything you want on it, carefully roll the nori with your fingers. You want it to be snug, but you also don’t want it to tear.

4) Once the sushi roll is actually rolled, roll it in the mat and give it a gentle squeeze for good measure. This, too, makes a difference.

5) Set the roll on a cutting board. Wet the blade of the knife before slicing it.

6) Now you have sushi. Your life is about to get better. (Or it should.)

At my family Thanksgivings, we made sushi in sort of an assembly line. Two or three of us would make rolls and one person would cut them, then everything would show up at the table on communal serving dishes because that’s how the pilgrims did it. Sophia and Jeff interpreted homemade sushi as more of an individual thing: make your own sushi roll, cut it yourself, eat it on your own plate. This makes sense to me. There’s more latitude to personalize. It’s not like you’d have someone else make your burrito. (Would you? Maybe you would.)

I got the idea from Jeff to bite into my sushi roll without cutting it. It’s not what he ended up doing, but it’s what I did with the first abomination sushi roll. It had basil, cream cheese, clover sprouts, cucumber, green beans, and avocado. Have you ever had cream cheese and sushi rice together?! It’s only kind of EXTREMELY AMAZING.

Like the value of being classically trained, tradition is important. It has its place, but it seems like the best shit that goes down in the kitchen happens after you stop giving a fuck, and selectively retain the parts of your “classical training” or whatever that are gonna make whatever you’re doing amazing. Free to be you and me, bitches.

Also, anti-cake-mix bias or no, it’s pretty damn cool when your family is the kind of family who picks up a kind of tradition like sushi at Thanksgiving.

So amazing that I made another one and cut it that time.

What would you put in an abomination sushi roll?




*Some of the best cupcakes I ever made involved cake mix. I hid it in my room after I brought it home from the store and added it hella on the DL. I brought the mixing bowl into my room when I was making the cupcakes so nobody would see me use the cake mix. They ate the cupcakes later and liked them. Trufax. To keep these fax tru, plz don’t tell my parents that those cupcakes were made from cake mix.