Dragon Roll, Decorative Spiral Sushi and Nigiri Sushi

The November 2009 Daring Cooks challenge was brought to you and me by Audax of Audax Artifex and Rose of The Bite Me Kitchen. They chose sushi as the challenge.

I made sushi randomly a few times in 2003 but had not revisited it since unless I was eating out or if someone else (i.e. a Valentine one year) was making it for me. Without Audax and Rose's challenge and very impressive PDF containing detailed instructions with thorough research and visuals (it can be downloaded here) I doubt my bamboo mats and wooden spoons ever would have seen the light of day again.

Sushi is tasty but unless you are an expert it requires a bit of time. I advise dedicating several hours to this project as it isn't as short one. I started at 6 pm on Sunday and finished around 11:30 pm. I also recommend doing this as a sushi party or having friends over for dinner; I made way too much food for one person and while the leftovers are allright sushi is clearly better fresh!

It was very excited to learn how to make spiral rolls (so many possibilities here) and dragon rolls (my favorite)! The dragon roll video, which I watched after cutting my avocado length-wise rather than horizontally post-split, is very helpful. Next time I make dragon rolls, I'll cut the avocado more thinly and in the proper direction, but I made it work with the thicker cuts I had already made. It really goes to show that sushi is flexible and has lots of room for creativity.

My spiral roll used tuna, red pepper, cucumber and persimmon. In the future, I will definitely bulk up the fillings and be more experimental. I've seen some beautiful, non-fish versions from other Daring Cooks and in a few days you'll probably be able to a slideshow of everyone's work over on The Daring Kitchen website.