Rice Rolled

I made makisushi. Nearly everyone reading is likely to have tried this already at home so I'm not going to re-invent the wheel for you here but I thought a few notes about what I did might be of interest, particularly if you're in a place where Japanese ingredients are hard to find.

Firstly I used a short grain brown rice. I wanted to do this because it's a little more nutritious than the white and these rolls would inevitably form a major part of my food for a couple of days. To make sure the rice was tender and cooked quickly I soaked it for 12 hours before cooking. It's still not quite the same as rolling authentic Japanese white rice but it worked.

Then I had no sushi su, the vinegar mix used for seasoning the hot rice before it's rolled. This is very easy to make at home; the basic proportions are by volume:

9 measures of rice vinegar
3 measures of sugar
1 measure of salt
1 measure of mirin

However I had to substitute for the rice vinegar with cider vinegar. This is much stronger than rice vinegar, more acidic, so I replaced 3 measures of vinegar with water to reduce the acidity. I also cut right back on the salt, which I regret now from a taste point of view but wanted to be healthy, and I had no mirin. To give it that slightly raw alcoholic fragrance I used a teaspoonful of Cuban white rum but there's no doubt mirin would have worked better.

Gently heat the ingredients together in a thick bottomed pan until the sugar and salt have dissolved, no need to boil. This keeps quite well so you can make more than you need and keep the rest in a clean jar in the fridge for next time.

I had no pickled ginger. Root ginger, the younger and more tender the better, is easy (if frightening) to slice on the mandoline into very thin wafers. Use a little of your sushi su to cover them and allow to marinate for several hours. I made a small jar of this too, to see me through the next couple of weeks.

Not perfect, but it helped to satisfy my cravings for the exotic in this rural backwater of France.