Avocado & vegetable sushi

 

I wanted to try and cook something different for Meatless Monday, so I decided to make some vegetarian sushi. While they will eventually get prettier with some more practice, I am proud of my very first sushi!

Making these avocado and vegetables sushi ended up being easier than anticipated. It’s easy to cook the rice, and prepare the rice seasoning and the vegetables. But I watched tutorials on YouTube to learn how to roll the sushi, and particularly this one by Tom Lin on how to make simple and delicious sushi. It was very useful.

The quantities in the recipe here make 6 thin sushi rolls (36 sushi, for 2 people).

Ingredients

for the rice

• 2 tablespoons of rice vinegar
• 2 teaspoons of sugar (I used demerara sugar)
• ¼ teaspoon of salt (I used Himalayan salt)
• 2 teaspoons of sesame seeds (optional)
• 1 cup of sushi rice
• 1 cup of water

for the filling

• ½ ripe avocado
• Lemon
• ½ yellow bell pepper
• ½ small seedless cucumber
• 2 spring onions

for assembling the sushi

• 3 nori sheets, cut in half to make 6 thin rolls
• A bamboo sushi rolling mat placed in a freezer bag (to keep the bamboo mat clean)
• A mixing bowl with some clean water and a bit of rice vinegar (to wet the hands)

Preparation

1. In a mixing bowl, prepare the rice seasoning: combine the rice vinegar, sugar, salt and sesame seeds. Set aside (but stir once in a while to help and dissolve the sugar and salt).

2. Cook the rice: rinse the rice several times until there is no starch coming out of it (I used a mixing bowl and a colander), and drain. Put the rice in a saucepan (with a lid) with 1 cup of water. Bring uncovered to a boil stirring often, turn down the heat to low, and simmer covered for 15 minutes (do not uncover during cooking!). Remove from the heat, and set aside without uncovering for 10 minutes more. Fluff the rice with a fork, and using a wooden spoon (to avoid to break the grains) add the rice to the seasoning in the mixing bowl and fold to coat the rice. Let the seasoned rice cool to room temperature.

3. In the meantime, prepare the vegetables. Avocado: peel, slice thinly, and squeeze some lemon juice on the slices. Yellow bell pepper: deseed, remove the white inner parts, and cut into matchsticks. Cucumber: cut into matchsticks. And spring onion: trim and cut into matchsticks.

4. When the rice is cool, assemble the sushi: place the bamboo mat in front of you on a clean surface. Place a nori half-sheet (rough side facing up) lining up with the closest edge of the mat. With moist hands, take a handful of rice, place it on the nori sheet, and spread it evenly without pressing too hard (leaving 1½ cm of empty nori at the far edge of the sheet). In the middle of the rice lengthwise, line up evenly some avocado, yellow bell pepper, cucumber and spring onion. Using the bamboo mat, roll the sushi away from you, pressing with the fingers to keep the filling in place. Place the sushi roll on a cutting board, and using a wet knife cut the roll into 6 pieces.

Eat at once, or store in the fridge for a little while before eating. Serve with pickled ginger, soy sauce (the low sodium one) and wasabi.