Making Sushi At home

Last spring, during the first lockdown, Niko came home one day with only one thing on his mind: making dessert sushi. Not going to lie; at first, I was a little dubious. I don’t eat fish – or any seafood, for that matter – so, by extension, I don’t like sushi. I don’t like seaweed either, so I don’t even go for dessert or vegetarian sushi. How my boyfriend came up with the idea of making sushi and how he found a way to make it work is still a wonder to me. He’s pretty wonderful. 

Anyway, he ended up convincing me. By convincing me, I mean that he ordered all the sushi necessities from Uber Eats, so when it showed up at our door, there was no turning back. We used a sushi making kit from Mito Sushi, but there are many companies that offer similar kits. It came with a big bag of sushi rice, a bamboo rolling mat, and we chose soybean paper, but you can easily opt for nori if that’s what you prefer. 

Not even two minutes in, I was already thoroughly enjoying myself. We sat in the kitchen for hours, thinking of delicious combinations, covering our hands in sticky rice and tasting our little creations. We ended up making two types of sushi: a caramel apple nigiri and a chocolate drizzle banana-apple futo maki. I included both recipes down below so you can recreate them or simply use them as inspiration. My biggest tip is this: let your imagination roam free, because the flavor possibilities are literally endless. We decided to make sweet sushi, but you can also go the traditional route and use fish and/or your favorite veggies. 

​I wanted to share this activity with you because it truly brought joy into our home that day. We were in the middle of a pandemic, everything was closed, we were missing our family… But somehow, the day got completely turned around with that activity, because it was something new, and it ended up being exactly what we needed. Now that a lot of us are entering a new lockdown, why not try new things, things that we never thought we would like? During the first lockdown, we all picked up new hobbies; we started making bread, we read all the books that we had been meaning to read, and we took that online course that we had been eyeing for years. Now it’s time to do things outside of our comfort zone. Try food that we usually don’t like, watch that movie that seems to suck, read that book that somebody gave us but is totally not our favorite genre. We never know where joy and excitement might be hidden. Let’s make sushi when we (technically) hate sushi.

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Extra Tips
I’m not an expert by any means, but here are the few tips that I picked up along the way.

• Don’t forget to wet your hands before touching the cooked rice. Otherwise the sushi is going to end up around your hand and not on the paper.
• If using soybean paper: Soybean paper cannot be wet, or it will rip. To seal the roll closed, instead of dotting the edge of the paper with water like you would do with nori, place little dots of rice along the edge. The rice will act as glue.
• When cutting your roll, use the sharpest knife that you have and slightly wet the blade so the rice doesn’t stick to it.
• Don’t forget the keep your sushi in the fridge, even if they’re dessert ones.

​I hope that you feel inspired by this activity. If you end up trying it out, don’t forget to take lots of pictures and use the hashtag #teaandmascara. I would love to see how you spend this second lockdown.

​Happy New Year!

Much love,