Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Pork Apocalypse



Over the past few months, there have been a lot of disturbing reports of humans eating other humans (check: Florida, Canada, Brazil  Russia, China).  Are these just a series of coincidences or telltale signs of the looming apocalypse on 21.12.2012?

What do humans taste like? I’m sure this question has crossed the minds of all of us at one time or another. This question will be high on the radar when the apocalypse occurs and it gets to the point where there is nothing left to eat but each other…

According to robots, humans taste like bacon. Researchers at NEC System technologies and Mie University designed a robotic gastronomist capable of identifying wines, cheeses, meats and hors d’oeuvres. When a hand was placed under the robots jaw it was identified as “bacon”!

Many cannibals consider the taste of human flesh to be similar to pork. One of the world’s most famous cannibals is Armin Meiwes from Germany. He achieved international notoriety for killing and eating a voluntary victim whom he had found via the Internet. In an interview from his prison cell, Meiwes says - "The flesh tastes like pork, a little bit more bitter, stronger. It tastes quite good.". Other German cannibals, Karl Denke and Fritz Haarmann, killed people and sold their flesh at the markets as pork. 

Interestingly, Germans eat a lot of pork. Actually, pork is the most popular meat consumed in the world with 85 billion tons consumed annually, a third more than beef or chicken.

You know the saying “you are what you eat”… well if we eat a lot of pork, does this mean that we would taste like one too?

Still not convinced by this human = pork hypothesis?

Earlier this year I went to Penguin Island for a picnic. When you are on an island, Lord of the Flies will inevitably come up in conversation, and so will cannibalism. I confess that I was the one guilty of starting the cannibalism conversation. In the car ride to Safety Bay with my friends Karen and Nicola, we were telling each other what we had been up to and I told them that I had been reading a lot about cannibalism, the apocalypse and trying to come up with a pork inspired dish (this is nothing out of the ordinary right, isn’t this what most people do in their spare time?!). So the Lord of the Flies comes up in conversation at the picnic and Nicola mentions that we were talking about cannibalism in the car. As the resident cannibalism expert of the group, I proceed to tell people that we taste like pork. Another person reaffirmed this by telling us that he has a friend who works as a nurse at a hospital and he was told that when surgery is conducted, instead of a scalpel, some laser ray device is used and when it cuts through human flesh, it smells good hmmm… kind of like pork…

There are also many similarities between humans and pigs.

•    Pigs are often used for dissection in biology labs due to the similarity between their organs and human organs. The internal organs of humans and pigs are alike not only in size, but also in physiology, so that insulin made from a pig’s pancreas can be used by humans for diabetes. There is also a lot research and trials been done at the moment on breeding genetically engineered pigs for the purpose of harvesting their organs for transplant into humans.

•    Pigs are highly intelligent and ranked fourth in animal intelligence behind chimpanzees, dolphins and elephants. They have great cognitive abilities, good memories, form social groups and exhibit similar behaviours to humans. For example, pigs are very clean animals, they are the only farm animals that make a separate sleeping den (which they keep spotless) and use a latrine area. Pigs can also be housetrained, taught to fetch, do tricks and play video games with a joy stick.

•    Have you ever noticed how the skin of pigs appears quite similar to humans? Some tattooists even use pig skin to practice on. (WARNING: You may find the following images disturbing, link to photos of pigs getting tattooed, click at your own risk here or here)

•    In Christopher Hitchen’s book God Is Not Great, he claims that one of the reasons why religions such as Judaism and Islam don’t eat pork is because pigs are too much like humans. Quote: “The simultaneous attraction and repulsion derived from an anthropomorphic root: the look of the pig, and the taste of the pig, and the dying yells of the pig, and the evident intelligence of the pig, were too uncomfortably reminiscent of the human (p 40).”

•    George Orwell was considered a visionary. His classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four provided some hauntingly accurate predictions of the future. Specifically, the intrusion of government into the everyday life of its citizens, with many concepts such as Big Brother, doublethink, thoughtcrime and newspeak often used to describe the current state of affairs. Is it a coincidence that George Orwell likened humans to animals in his novel Animal Farm and made the pigs run the farm? As the years pass in Animal Farm, the pigs become more humanised, they learn to walk upright, carry whips and wear clothes. During a poker match, an argument breaks out between Napoleon and Mr Pilkington when they both play the Ace of Spades, and the animals realise that the faces of the pigs look like the faces of humans and no one can tell the difference between them. Maybe the works of Orwell do not only propel us to question authority but also to question whether or not we are pigs?...

Did you know that the term “long pork” is code for human flesh? I wasn’t aware of this until my friend told me that during the Soviet famine in the 1930s, situations of desperation, scarcity of food lead to people eat their fellow human beings and sell human flesh on the market as long pork in order to survive. Sounds like it could be our future after 21.12.2012? (Note: this came up in conversation because I was telling my friend that I was planning a series of apocalypse inspired dishes this year and brainstorming ideas). With this in mind, over the past few weeks I slowly came up with the concept for a pork inspired apocalypse dish.

So here I present my second apocalypse inspired dish – it’s a “Pork Apocalypse”. Don’t worry I have not cooked any humans. I’ve done a literal interpretation of long pork by slow roasting a stuffed rolled loin of pork. A slice of the pork is set on top of apple sauce with a camp fire cooking bacon, in desolate surroundings with the shrubbery of deep fried Brussels sprouts.


 My first apocalypse inspired dish was a "Mushroom Apocalypse on a Dessert"



(My long pork - a long piece of pork loin, stuffed, rolled up and roasted until tender with crispy, crackling skin) 

(A new revelation for me - deep fried Brussels sprouts! The first time I have cooked them this way and it was delicious.)

How to cook a Pork Apocalypse

Rolled Roast Pork
•    ~2kg of boneless pork loin with skin (you want a good amount of fat/rind for crackling) and enough belly flap to wrap around the meat and make a roll, trimmed
•    2 teaspoons fennel seeds, toasted
•    olive oil
•    lots of salt
Stuffing for pork
•    75g rocket, roughly chopped
•    40g pine nuts, light toasted in the oven for 2-3 minutes and roughly chopped in processor
•    50-60g parmesan, grated
•    50g breadcrumbs
•    25g parsley, roughly chopped
•    1 small shallot, diced
•    1-2 cloves garlic, minced
•    1 egg, lightly beaten
•    ½ - 1 tablespoon thyme
•    some salt, pepper and nutmeg to taste

Preheat the oven to 220C.

Take pork out of refrigerator and allow to come to room temperature before cooking.
Combine all the stuffing ingredients together well in a bowl.

Pat dry the pork skin with paper towels and score the skin using a sharp knife at 5mm intervals in a criss-cross pattern but take care not to go through to the flesh (this allows the fat from underneath to bubble up, crisping the skin as it does so).

Turn the pork over, skin side down and pack the stuffing into the pork cavity. Roll pork up to enclose stuffing and tie meat at 2cm intervals with cooking string to secure.

Rub a little olive oil over the skin of the pork (I find that this helps the salt to stick onto the skin) and sprinkle liberally with salt (rubbing it in), fennel and allspice just before you put it in the oven.

Place in a large, heavy-based roasting pan (you can elevate the pork on a roasting rack to keep it from sticking to the bottom of the pan and so that it cooks evenly because the heat surrounds it). Roast the pork at 220C for 30 minutes, then reduce temperature to 180°C and roast for a further 100 minutes (25 minutes for every 500g). Cook until the pork reaches an internal temperature of ~72-74C.

Remove from oven and cover with foil and let it rest for 10 minutes before carving. This allows the juices to settle, which helps keep the meat tender and moist. Cooked pork’s internal temperature will rise 3-8C after cooking and during resting so avoid overcooking.
Remove the string, brush off the excess salt and carve into slices, each with a crisp layer of crackling.

Apple Sauce
•    20g butter
•    20g caster sugar
•    4 granny smith apples, peeled and diced
•    1 cinnamon stick
•    1 star anise
•    1 teaspoon mixed spices
•    ½ tablespoon lemon juice
•    salt to taste

In a thick based saucepan, melt butter and stir in the sugar until it dissolves. Leave to cook until it becomes a light golden caramel colour. Add in the apples and give them a good stir to coat with butter. Add cinnamon stick, star anise and spices. Stir to combine and leave apples to cook on a gentle heat for ~10 minutes.

Once the apples are cooked, place them in a small food processor and blend until smooth. Push the apple puree through a sieve to get a smoother consistency.

Deep Fried Brussels Sprouts
Wash, trim and halve Brussels sprouts. Preheat oil to 180C and deep fry brussels sprouts in batches, stirring occasionally until crisp and dark golden (4-5 minutes). Drain on paper towels.

Camp Fire
Tealight surrounded with wood chips made from prosciutto which had been roasted in the oven at 180C until it was dry enough to be crumbled into shards. Plus sticks of rosemary and bacon.  


Friday, July 20, 2012

Chocolate Bourbon Cake with Cream Cheese Bourbon Vanilla Icing and Bourbon Cider Jelly



Me: I’m a food blogger.
Random Person: What’s the name of your blog?
Me: Food Endeavours of the Blue Apocalypse.
Random Person: That’s an interesting name.
Me: Do you know the metal band Tool?... My blog is named after a Tool song.
Random Person: You don’t look like someone that listens to metal.

This is a conversation that I often have with people.

“I don’t look like someone that listens to metal?!”

Well I used to have blue hair and wear black all the time, so I looked a bit like a Tool (sorry, pardon the pun) but I’ve grown out of it (I decided it was ok to wear colours and stop killing my hair) but my music tastes remain the same.

I have mixed feelings whenever this conversation occurs. On the one hand I think great, it’s kind of cool when you don’t conform to people’s expectations (ie: don’t judge a book by it’s cover). On the other hand I feel a little annoyed, it’s natural to form opinions on others based on how they look and I’m Asian. Being Asian comes with it a whole bunch of associations and stereotypes, which I am anything but….


See this sweet looking cake? It looks delicious, doesn't it? There is a lot of alcohol in it, namely bourbon.  It’s not such a sweet looking cake anymore is it?

How did bourbon get into the cake?

I was at Devilles Pad for a friend’s birthday, someone I had only known a few months. I offered to buy him a birthday drink and asked him want he wanted. He said surprise me.

At the bar I looked through the cocktail menu and the drink that stood out for me was Beasts of Bourbon. I thought that he looked like a bourbon drinker and I was right.  When I put the drink down in front of him, he instantly recognized it as Beasts of Bourbon and told me that he loved drinking bourbon. In fact, he had two duty free bottles of bourbon at home and he had been wondering what he should do with it all. We spent some time discussing what you could cook with bourbon, notably I told him about an amazing 6 hour bourbon beef short ribs that I had at The Classroom Bar which is something that I will attempt to make at some point. So I had bourbon on my mind that weekend as I was brainstorming a cake for the May Clandestine Cake Club in Perth with ‘decadence’ as the theme.

Alcohol is often used in cakes – rum, amaretto, brandy, Guinness…so why not bourbon. I like drinking bourbon. I suspect that I picked this up from going to many metal gigs and ordering what everyone else ordered “bourbon and coke” which appears to be the drink of choice and acquired a taste for it.

Someone commented on a photo of the cake that without the cream icing it would look like a cake version of bourbon and coke with the ice cubes on top. I’m sure that I could bake such a cake one day and incorporate some coca-cola into the cake batter. It would be a bogans delight. Bourbon and coke has always been known as the drink of bogans/metalheads and I have always wondered why. A search on google hasn’t yield anything but what I have found out about whiskey in general can be summed up as this - whiskey is a so-called man’s drink, it has a reputation as a hard liquor. It always has and still carries with it an association of manliness, it has a prominent place in situations of males drinking together and bonding. Scotch takes on an almost elite status in the eyes of many, representing a dignified drink, it’s almost like the colour of gold. It’s one to have on the rocks while having intelligent conversations about politics, economics and the like. Scotch is that drink that all your male friends mature into. Bourbon on the other hand, isn’t considered as classy. Bourbon is cheaper and its affordability and dark tone lends itself to a younger crowd, the working class and notorious associations with rock’n’roll. My friend Riche suggested that maybe it had something to do with where bourbon is produced, the majority is made in Kentucky which evokes images of rebellion, the wild west, being an outlier of society which is I guess how bogans/metalheads must feel sometimes.

So I couldn’t think of anything more decadent than making a cake with one of my favourite spirits, especially when it’s something that people would least expect. To be decadent is to be self-indulgent and I took it to the edge. My cake had a triple hit of bourbon in it. It was made up of a chocolate bourbon cake (1 cup bourbon), cream cheese bourbon vanilla icing (4 tablespoons of bourbon) and bourbon cider jelly (1 shot of bourbon and 500ml cider).

I wanted to add an element to the top of the cake so I decided to use apple as it’s a component of a Beasts of Bourbon cocktail. I settled on making jelly with bourbon and cider. I’m not sure if you are supposed to put jelly on a cake but I was experimenting, and I liked how the jelly wobbled on the cake every time I moved it. I also found out that as I drove over to cake club most of the jelly slide off the cake…opps. It’s like trying to drive with soapy hands, the jelly is quite slippery. If anyone has any ideas on how to make jelly stay on top of a cake, I would love to know. The apple cider jelly went really well with the chocolate bourbon cake. Everyone who tried the cake commented on how well the flavour combination of chocolate, apple and bourbon worked together.

 Cider Jelly

When I brought the cake to the Clandestine Cake Club and opened the lid of the container it had been stored in, the smell of the alcohol permeated through the air. I even got a bit drunk making it, it was all quality control of course as I tested the cake batter before it went in the oven, added in the bourbon bit by bit as I was mixing the icing until I got the desired taste and ate some (well maybe a lot of) jelly to make sure it had set properly. I was rushing around that Sunday afternoon trying to finish off the cake and when I stood up at one point I got a bit of a head rush. Consuming quite a bit alcohol and sugar on a Sunday afternoon probably isn’t a good thing. This cake should probably come with some sort of advisory warning, for example: Do not eat cake and then head bang to metal music, it may cause dizziness, feelings of nausea. 


Clandestine Cake Club Perth held on Sunday 20 May 2012 with 6 cakes on offer – caispiroska cake, 16 layer chocolate crepe cake, exploding chocolate gateau, flourless chocolate coffee cake with crumble on top, a white and dark chocolate patty cake, and my chocolate bourbon cake with apple cider jelly on top.

Chocolate Bourbon Cake with Cream Cheese Bourbon Vanilla Icing and Bourbon Cider Jelly

(Original idea by Blue Apocalypse adapting a cake from a Nigella recipe and using this recipe as a guide for making cider jelly)

FYI – I used Marker's Mark Bourbon.

Chocolate Bourbon Cake

Ingredients

•    250ml bourbon
•    250g butter, cut into 2-3cm cubes
•    75g cocoa powder
•    400g caster sugar
•    1 x 142ml pot sour cream
•    2 eggs
•    1 tablespoon vanilla extract
•    275g plain flour
•    2 ½ teaspoons baking soda
•    1 teaspoon salt

Chocolate Bourbon Cake batter

Method

Preheat oven to 180C and line a 20cm round baking tin with greaseproof paper.
Add the bourbon and butter into a small saucepan and heat until the butter has melted, then whisk in the cocoa powder until the mixture is smooth. Set aside for a few minutes to cool slightly.

Shift the flour, baking soda and salt together in a bowl.

In a large bowl, beat the eggs and sugar together until just combined, then add in sour cream and vanilla and beat until well combined. Slowly pour the bourbon-chocolate mixture into the egg mixture and use a whisk to mix in and incorporate together. Add in the flour into the chocolate mixture and whisk to combine.

Blend the mixture well together with a whisk but don’t overbeat. You want the ingredients to be combined but you don’t want a light airy mass as the cake should have a dense texture.

Pour batter into cake tin and bake for 45 minutes at 180C and then turn the temperature down to 170C and bake for another 10 minutes.

Leave the cake to cool completely in the cake tin as it is quite a damp cake and will also sink a little in the middle.

Cream cheese bourbon icing

Ingredients

•    300g cream cheese (leave out to soften at room temperature)
•    150g icing sugar
•    125ml cream (whipping cream)
•    4 tablespoons bourbon
•    1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Method

Lightly whip the cream cheese until smooth, sieve over the icing sugar and then beat together.

Add the cream and beat until it has a spreadable consistency. 

 Icing Bourbon Cake

Bourbon and Cider Jelly

Ingredients

•    100g caster sugar
•    100ml water
•    6 sheets gelatin leaves
•    1 shot of bourbon
•    500ml cider (I used Custard Apple Cider)

Method

Put the sugar and water in a small saucepan and cook, stirring over a low heat until the sugar dissolves. Remove from heat.

Put the gelatin leaves in a bowl and cover with cold water. Leave the gelatin to soften in the water for a few minutes. Drain and squeeze excess water from gelatine. Add the gelatin into the sugar mixture and stir to dissolve.

Pour the cider into the sugar-gelatine mixture with one hand and use a whisk to combine the mixture with the other hand. Add in a shot of bourbon and whisk to combine.
Pour the bourbon cider jelly mixture into a container (I lined a baking tin with foil). Refrigerate over night or at least 4-5 hours to set.

Put together the Bourbon Cake

Cut the top of the cake to make level. Ice the cake. Cut up the jelly into cubes and put over the top.

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Mushroom and Rocket Sushi. Vegetarianism.


I am a minority meat eater.

About 75% of my close group of friends who I have known for 7+ years are vegetarian.
No, they are not hippies, but they are left and indie, which seems to have a high correlation with vegetarianism. In such circumstances, there would have been a high probability that I could have turned vegetarian too at some point in my life. However, my dad is a chef and I have been exposed to many amazing dishes throughout my life and so many memories of family feasts involve meat – a whole steamed fish, a whole roast duck or master stock poached chicken and on special occasions we would hack into a whole suckling pig. The Chinese have this thing where they like to serve the whole beast on the table as it is considered auspicious to have a beginning and an end, symbolizing abundance and togetherness. I enjoy eating meat and would find it very hard to give it up, and my family may disown me if I do. 

A whole chicken and whole fish - food my family eats for Chinese New Year.

It would not be unusual for me to be dining out at an Indian restaurant with a group of 10 people and be the only meat eater. But I have never restricted myself when ordering around my vegetarian friends, whilst they ponder over all the vegetarian curries on offer to order to share, I would order a plate of lamb chops all to myself. So one good thing is that I never have to share my food but I get to try a bit of everything else's dishes. While I tend to go for a meat option when dining out, when we have pot luck dinners or picnics I have cook food that is vegetarian friendly.

It always surprises people when I tell them that most of my friends are vegetarians, especially other food bloggers, some tell me that they wouldn’t be able to stand it. It’s common to find food bloggers taking a jibe at vegetarians in blog posts with statements like “vegetarians looks away, here's a picture of meat”, “feel sorry for vegetarians because they can’t eat here” or “I’ve ordered a token vegetarian dish”. It’s no secret that a general disdain is exhibited towards vegetarians because being vegetarian limits the food experiences you can have and vegetarian food is often viewed as bland or inferior.

Being vegetarian is almost like telling people that you are a non-drinker. You become subject to sneering remarks and people become condescending, telling you that you are missing out or you need to loosen up a bit and have some fun. No you are not better than everyone else just because you eat bacon or you like to have a beer or two. In the end it’s about choice. If vegetarians wanted to eat meat than they could but it doesn’t appeal to them, just as alcohol does not appeal to some people.

I have been exposed to a lot of different vegetarian dishes through my friends who have shown me time and time again that vegetarian food can be delicious. Without meat as the main source of protein, vegetarians are creative in cooking a variety of proteins (nuts, seeds, pulses and grains) and using different spices and seasonings to flavour dishes. I’ve found that vegetarian food is anything but boring. The only boring vegetarian food will be found at restaurants which provide one or two vegetarian dishes out of tokenism rather than offering a genuine choice. You can tell that not much thought has been put in when the only choices available are risotto or pasta (neither are particularly done well) or a medley of vegetables (ie: I stacked every vegetable I could find in the kitchen). I also have to be a bit more creative and think about what I cook for my friends. I like this challenge. One thing that I don’t think many people realise is that vegetarians also love food and they want to be excited by food and eat interesting dishes as much as meat eaters.

I coexist happily with my vegetarian friends, we often joke about it. The fact of the matter is that all vegetarians need to keep company with a meat eating friend, just as it’s a good idea for drinkers to have a non-drinking friend who can be the designated driver and actually recall details of the night before.

Case in point.

Last year my friends and I went down south to Margaret River. We had a rest stop at a petrol station/lunch bar off the highway on the drive down. We replenished ourselves with food at the lunch bar, it wasn’t anything great, but you can’t expect much from lunch bar connected to a petrol station off a highway with nothing else around. A lot of meat pies which have been sitting in the pie warmer for god knows how long, chiko rolls, dim sims, toasted sandwiches, chips, wedges and I admit to having chicken wingdings (trying to relive a childhood memory that was not worth going there for). While we were sitting down and eating our food a lot of bogan like people came in and out of the lunch bar. It was the major highway heading down south so the day-to-day clientele were truckies, hi-vis wearing tradies, other holidayers coming in to grab a Mrs Mac’s to go. We dubbed it bogan central. I was the only meat eater in the group and my friend commented that “it’s a good thing you’re eating meat, otherwise we might get bashed up”. This was a joke of course, but people perceive you differently and look at you funny sometimes when they know you are vegetarian. I knew my wingdings would save the day somehow, even though nothing could save its taste. To all the bogans entering the joint we were sending them telepathic messages…. “There’s meat on our table, we are not weird.”

***

For a picnic, I came up with an idea to make some vegetarian sushi inspired by a lunch that I had at Aisuru Sushi where my friends were overjoyed by the fact that there was a full vegetarian and vegan menu, not just the token 2-3 items that they usually have to deal with. The mushroom sushi dishes were a favourite so I thought I would create my own version of mushroom sushi for my friends. 

So here’s my take on a mushroom sushi, bursting with 5 different types of mushrooms with a lot of depth in the flavour as a result of simmering the mushrooms in a dashi-soy broth until the liquid had evaporated into the pores of the mushrooms. 


Mushroom and Rocket Sushi

(An original recipe by the Blue Apocalypse, inspired by lunch at Aisuri Sushi and dedicated to my vegetarian friends)

Ingredients

•    2 cups sushi rice
•    rice vinegar mixture for sushi rice (2 tablespoons rice vinegar, 1 ½ tablespoons sugar and 1 teaspoon salt)
•    ~ 400g of mushrooms sliced into strips (mix of enoki, oyster, hon-shimeji, fresh shiitake)
•    rocket leaves
•    nori sheets
Mushroom dashi-soy broth
•    4 cups water
•    ~ 10cmX15cm piece kombu (dried kelp)
•    6 dried shiitake mushrooms
•    1-2 slices of ginger
•    3 tablespoons soy sauce
•    1 tablespoon sake
•    1 tablespoon mirin
•    1 teaspoon sugar
•    pinch salt

Method

Prepare mushroom dashi soy broth

Using scissors, make a few snips into the kombu to help release the flavours. Place water, kombu and shiitake mushrooms in a saucepan and soak for at least 30 minutes (the kombu and mushrooms will soften and expand).

Add ginger into the saucepan, place the pan over medium heat and slowly bring to the boil. Just before it reaches boiling point, remove the kombu and discard. Simmer the shiitake mushrooms for a further 5 minutes then remove the shiitake mushrooms and slice.

Add in soy sauce, sake, mirin, sugar and salt to taste.


Cook mushrooms

Heat up a large frying pan and add the mix of mushrooms (enoki, oyster, hon-shimeji, fresh shiitake mushrooms and rehydrated sliced shiitake mushrooms that was cooked in the dashi broth). Fry the mushrooms for a few minutes until they have browned slightly and reduced in volume.

Then add in a cup of the mushroom dashi soy broth and continue to simmer until the liquid has evaporated.

[Freeze the rest of the dashi soy broth for later use – you can make a soup with it]

Add mushrooms
Fry mushrooms
Add dashi stock
Simmer mushrooms until liquid evaporates

Cook and prepare sushi rice

Cook the rice according to the packet instructions OR Rinse the sushi rice repeatedly with cold water until the water is clear. Drain thoroughly.  Add the sushi rice into a rice cooker and add in 3 cups of water. Turn rice cooker on.

While the rice is cooking, prepare the rice vinegar mixture by heating the rice vinegar, sugar and salt in a small saucepan until the sugar has dissolved.

When the rice has finished cooking, remove it from the cooker and place it in a large bowl, drizzle the rice vinegar mixture evenly over the rice and thoroughly mix into the rice.

Let the sushi rice cool (you can fan it so that it cools faster)

Rolling mushroom and rocket sushi

Place nori sheet down on bamboo mat with the shiny side down and rough side up.
With wet hands, spread rice on the nori sheet, the layer of rice should be thin, less than ¼ inch thick.

Your hands should be wet when working with the sushi rice as it is sticky but keep hands dry when placing the nori on the bamboo mat and rolling it up.

Leave an inch of nori uncovered (the end furthest away from you) and rub a little of water on it (this will seal the two sides of the nori together).

Line up ingredients in the middle of the nori – place some rocket leaves on first and then add on top some cooked mushrooms.

Holding the closest edge of the bamboo mat, roll the sushi away from you, tightening the roll as you go. Keep the contents in the sushi roll tight and firm by using the bamboo mat to shape the roll, sliding it over and across the top of the sushi.

Run a knife under hot water to prevent it from sticking when it cuts the sushi pieces. Slice the sushi into ~ 2cm pieces.

Eat the mushroom and rocket sushi pieces dipped in a little soy sauce.


Related posts (other mushroom dishes you might like):