Friends, the cherry blossoms have made their way straight into town here in the greater Washington D.C. area, and not a moment too soon! We were beginning to think those beloved blossoms would simply never arrive. But over the weekend, arrive they did, and in the blink of an eye they’ve already started to fade a bit. The Japanese use this transitory time to illustrate the impermanence of life – an apt comparison, that.
And life, indeed, may well be impermanent. Which is all the more reason to make sushi while one can! Gather ye cherry blossoms while ye may, and all that!
LeeLee and I had a couple of friends over last weekend to celebrate the blossoms by enjoying our annual Sushi Night (as featured this time last year in the podcast), which was a great hit and enjoyed by all in attendance. The sake flowed freely, the dumplings were steamed to perfection, the wasabi peas kept our eyes watering, and the sushi – oh, the sushi! – was in such abundance that we were all completely stuffed after the fact. By today, LeeLee and I had emerged from our sushi-fueled hibernation and were more than ready for Round Two.
There are several things to note about sushi. The first is: Leftovers don’t keep all that well. The rice turns to a mushy concrete, the vegetables go soggy, the inari dries up. (The dumplings keep magnificently, but let’s not quibble.) Talk about the impermanence of life!
The second thing to note is that sushi supplies come in huge quantities. A five-pound bag of sushi rice was the smallest I could find, for instance, and I have enough leftover nori and soy wrappers to feed an army. Also, those little fried-tofu pockets that serve as the basis for inari? They come about 30 to a pack. To say nothing of the chopsticks, which we have by the hundreds.
So tonight we decided to make good use of our sushi supplies and dig in for another go! I prepared a cup of sushi rice in the rice cooker, whipped up a sugar-vinegar sauce to blend in when the rice was cooked, and sliced up an avocado, a cucumber, and several Gardein vegan fish filets (cooked, of course). We had a bag of shredded carrots hanging around in the fridge, so I added some of them to the mix as well. I whipped up some wasabi paste, microwaved a few frozen vegetable dumplings, stuffed the inari with cooked rice, and we were ready to go!
I made a couple of different wraps tonight. The first you’ll find above – a vegan-fish-and-avocado concoction. The second was an all-veggie affair featuring cucumber, carrot, and avocado:
And by the time I had cut both rolls into smaller pieces and added the dumplings, et. al., to my plate, it had become a lot less neat and tidy (but quite tasty):
I don’t mind telling you that between us we mowed down four rolls’ worth of sushi, plus more than our share of dumplings and inari, as well as the leftover rice and veggies. “Why don’t we do sushi night more often?” LeeLee mused, and I couldn’t agree more. It’s easy to make, it’s fun to compose on the plate, and it always feels like an Event. I can think of worse ways to spend a Tuesday night, impermanent or not!
:)