Sushi Balls

06Feb07

Recipe inspired by Hideo Dekura’s “Japanese Cooking at Home”. He calls them Hand-ball Sushi but I think Sushi Balls has a much better ring to it!

Having spent many years in Tokyo where you can get it home delivered just as easily as Pizza (with an ice cold six pack of beer on the side no less!) I am a big fan of sushi – any type, any style, any time. And so, when faced with spending the day on the boat with Capt Scadwalker preparing for an evening cruise, I decided to try making a new style of sushi to give us something yummy for dinner when it was all over. Capt. Scadwalker was busy on the boat so he didn’t really take part. When he did come in to help, he didn’t appreciate my comments about his mis-shapen balls so he pretty much left me to it

Generally I find sushi really easy to make but quite a bit fiddle-y for every day. This was definitely the easiest that I’ve made so far, but the preparation alone still took over an hour. Much easier to pop down to the local sushi train but a lot less fun.

We’re lucky that the galley on the boat has most of the mod-cons available and the seafood shop is literally on the wharf next door, but I still had to improvise here and there. But improvising is half of the fun!

Let’s start with the rice:

What you need – sushi rice (or short grain rice) and sushi vinegar. (About 1/2 cup sushi vinegar for 2 cups rice etc.)

In a bowl of cool water, scrunch the rice through your fingers to wash and tip the milky water out. Repeat a couple of times until the water clears then let the rice stand in a colander for about 30 minutes. (If you leave the rice soaking in water for too long it tends to suck up the water and then your rice will be bit gluggy.) If you have a ricecooker then the next step is easy, simply pour in the rice and fill with water to the corresponding number on the side of the machine and flick ‘Cook’.

If you don’t have a rice cooker – you should buy one. Haha. Actually, it’s still pretty easy. My scientific method for making sticky rice is (and I forgot who taught me this but thank you!) to put the rice in the saucepan, place my hand flat palm down lightly on top and fill with water until it almost covers my hand. Cook on a very high heat until the water boils then turn the temperature down very low for 15-20 minutes. Resist the temptation to lift the lid!

The sushi experts always talk about using a wooden bowl for the next part but I don’t have anything like that at home let alone on the boat so I settled for the largest plastic dish I can find. Tip in your cooked rice and pour the 1/3 of the sushi vinegar over. To mix it through, keep the paddle vertical like you are combing the rice. What you are trying to do is break up the lumps without squashing the rice which is very easy to do. Pour another 1/3 of the mixture in and keep going. If you have time, you can fan the rice to cool it down but I never have time for that so I put it to the side to cool by itself while I do the toppings and keep the final 1/3 of sushi vinegar for later. Wet a paper towel or two and put over the rice to stop it from drying out while it cools.

Toppings:

We went to Peter’s Seafood on the Spit to see what he had available for the toppings and settled for some fresh salmon, cooked prawns, scallops, seafood sticks and the eggs I brought from home.

You can use whatever you want. That’s the beauty of sushi – (almost) anything goes!

Prawns: After peeling, just use a sharp knife to cut them down the middle from the under-side almost to the skin and flatten on your cutting board.

Egg: Mix with one teaspoon of Mirin and pour a thin layer in a fry

pan (tilt the frypan until it’s spread evenly) and cook over low heat. Flip to cook the other side and tip onto the cutting board and cut into 2cm wide ribbons.

I didn’t have a fry pan on the boat (okay, I did but it seemed too hard) so I cooked in the microwave

Prepare your other toppings by slicing thinly to the size of a 20 cent coin. We turned one scallop into two toppings by slicing horizontally through the middle. We also sliced the seafood stick very finely to create a pretty mosaic look topping. You can do whatever you want. The close up on the pictures show what we did in more detail.

And the balls:

Your rice should be cooled by now. Pour the final third of the sushi vinegar over and separate any remaining lumps.

For the final step you will need a bowl of water to wet your hands and a square of glad (plastic) wrap.

To make the balls, first wet your hands so the rice doesn’t stick. Grab a small quantity of rice and roll into a loose ball. Place your selected topping face down in the middle of the glad (plastic) wrap and the rice ball on top. Gather the corners together and twist the ends until the plastic tightens around the ball and compresses the two together.

Wha-la….Sushi Balls!

Serve with soy sauce and wasabi and enjoy!

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