Or, adventures in Saturday cooking and self-awareness.
I feel like I am a stuck-in-between kind of person. I guess that sentence is kind of syntactically ambiguous; I could either be saying (a) that I am a person caught between two (or more, ahem) things, where the things do most of the imaginary work and I am just a bit of stretch in the middle, or (b) that I am a person caught in a state of between-ness, where the state is the thing doing the work and the bordering poles are less relevant. I was actually thinking about the second interpretation when I wrote the sentence, but reading this over, I guess both apply.
This description fits a lot of us at one point or another, though not everyone decides to move into the territory and set up camp as I seem to have done. How many of us are longing for the last (administration, relationship, season) that we have left behind, feeling marooned in the present, and somehow reaching forward for the next phase? Being a between kind of person has its joys (lots of new things, a sense of motion and progress, anticipation and wonder) and sorrows (lots of new things, a sense of no motion or progress, anticipation and anxiety). I think a lot of my creativity and empathy comes from between-ness. I know what it’s like to be pulled and tugged, and I usually have at least one eye fixed on another possible (or impossible) world.
Cooking, for me, is a way of inhabiting between space. First come the ideas, memories, recipes, plans. Then you get in the kitchen and make the thing. And after, you share it or eat it or store it up for the future. The cooking or making bit is a mix of all three places, but you have to actually show up in the present/between/kitchen space in order for stuff to actually happen. For a between girl like me, all three phases come closest together with cooking, which is probably why I like it so much. While chopping or stirring, I can feel the past steering me with memories or recipe instructions, and I am headed towards a big plate of something good, or exciting, or comforting, or necessary. Things become possible, and I am momentarily un-stuck. Which brings me to the sushi burrito.
I have read and heard tell about these fellows, and have owned unused sushi mats (unused, but stored in hope!) for many a year. I don’t feel confident enough to make burritos with raw fish, but I do make a mean fish taco, and tacos are cousins to burritos, so it all kind of came together.
Please don’t mind the fact that I totally set the sushi mat up in the wrong direction. (Never used before! Practice makes perfect. Also: it didn’t matter much; I was able to swing the burrito around the right way, and also didn’t feel like the mat was essential in construction here.)
- For the sushi rice:
- ½ cup sushi rice
- ¾ cup water
- ½ tablespoon rice vinegar
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- For the slaw:
- 1 tablespoon mayo
- 1 tablespoon rice vinegar
- 1 teaspoon sriracha
- ½ teaspoon toasted sesame oil
- 2 cups shredded cabbage
- ½ cup shredded carrot
- a handful of cilantro
- For the burritos:
- 2 sheets of toasted nori
- 2 large or 4 small pieces of frozen breaded fish, cooked according to package directions
- 2 radishes, sliced into thin slices.
- Cook the sushi rice. Rinse the rice by covering with water and swirling with fingers to release the starches, then pouring off the cloudy water. Repeat until water runs clear or nearly clear - for me, this was 5-6 rinses. Soak the rice for 30 minutes. Drain, and add to a small pot with ¾ cup of water. Bring to the boil, cover, and turn down to low heat. Cook for 20 minutes, then remove the pot from the heat without removing the lid and leave to steam for 10 more minutes. Remove the cover and fluff with a fork. Add ½ tablespoon rice vinegar, 1 teaspoon sugar, and ¼ teaspoon salt to a medium bowl. Stir to dissolve, then add the rice, forking the dressing through and turning thoroughly to coat. Set aside.
- Cook the fish, then slice into thin-ish strips.
- Make the slaw. First, make the dressing. Mix the mayo, rice vinegar, sriracha, and toasted sesame oil together until smooth. Add the cabbage, carrot, and cilantro, and toss to coat.
- Once all the components are ready, make the sushi burritos. Set the nori sheet on your work surface. Add ½ of the rice, spreading it out until it is in a thin, even layer over the whole sheet. You'll need a small bowl of water to dip fingers in at this stage; the water helps with sticky fingers and rice spreading. Add a layer of slaw to one edge of the sheet; be careful not to cover more than a third of the sheet. Top with strips of the cooked fish, and a layer of radish slices. Now, be brave! Roll the burrito, using a quick tuck and fold method. The nori is softened and quite flexible at this point, so it should roll and stay stuck together without much fuss. End with a seam-side down burrito and press to seal the seam. Slice in half at an angle, and eat soon after making.
K
March 21, 2017 at 1:21 pmI REALLY want to eat this. If you leave a bit of room at one edge (don’t spread the rice quite so much) then you can seal your nori like an envelope by wetting the edge with warm water and then pressing it onto the burrito (the far edge, not the one at which you start rolling). Does that make sense? This looks so good!
Laura
March 23, 2017 at 3:13 pmI bet a rice free version could work. Or cauliflower rice, maybe?
K
March 27, 2017 at 8:58 pmHm…I could eat it without the rice, but it looks so amazing WITH the rice. Maybe just the slaw and nori would be enough.