It has been a long time since I last posted.  Almost an entire year. I could make excuse after excuse about how busy I’ve been, but I won’t waste time explaining that can be spent uploading pictures.

What prompted this post was the gift of two wasabi rhizomes from Ms. Azmina of Lawyer Loves Lunch (she got them in a cooking competition and used her rhizome to make wasabi fried shrimp). I decided to make sushi. I’ll shut up and show you pictures now.

First, we prepared sushi rice. It was a bit glutinous, but the flavor was good (with rice vinegar, sugar, salt, and roasted sesame seeds)

Tuna in focus

Salmon in focus

Yes, we realize a lot more rice should have been used. Oh, and yes, we're using a placemat to roll the sushi.

First roll attempt!

It quickly degenerated from here into a free for all, with us eating sashimi and nigiri, cutting slices from the fish as we needed it. I managed to snap a few more pictures though.

Out of focus tuna nigiri

At this point, my wanton lust for raw fish and wasabi had somewhat abated, along with the sushi rice. So, I had to get creative. I decided to add some herbed rice to the mixture. It was not great texture wise  (the unheated brown rice was a bit coarse), but the taste was good (lots of parsley and dill in the rice), so I still finished the whole roll.

Roll with the dregs of the sushi rice and some herbed rice and zucchini I had made the night before (note: I did not make the zucchini; my friend Elliotte did)

After the rice was done, I ate the rest of the fish as sashimi with grated fresh wasabi, ginger, and soy sauce…. while growling like a dinosaur.

Oh, lest I forget, I should describe the WASABI. Its taste was surprisingly similar to the horseradish + wasabi powder + food coloring we usually get here, but a bit subtler and with a earthier flavor. While it was certainly spicy, it didn’t pack the overpowering wallop you get from some restaurant wasabi. Overall, I am very grateful to Azmina for giving me the opportunity to try out wasabi for the first time.

I didn’t have the oroshigane grater that I was supposed to use to get a paste, so I just used the smallest side of the grater I had.

Grating fresh wasabi... this is probably a sacrilege to a true sushi chef. If there are any out there that see this, I apologize in advance.

Grated wasabi

However, what this meal lacked in technique, it more than made up for in taste.