If you want to serve a cool, colourful summer dish that has Asian flare, roll up some temaki, also called hand rolls. It鈥檚 a larger-format style of sushi eaten with your hands, where seasoned rice and other fillings are rolled inside a half sheet of nori into a cone shape.
Two cones per person make a nice serving, particularly if you serve them with another dish or two, such as miso soup or a Japanese-style salad.
Because of their larger size, they are a little less fussy to make than smaller sushi rolls, also called maki sushi. But making them involves a few steps, so if you haven鈥檛 done it before, today鈥檚 step-by-step photos will guide you.
You can find sushi rice, a starchy, medium-grained variety, and nori, pressed and toasted sheets of seaweed, at most supermarkets and at Japanese food stores.
I filled my hand rolls with cooked, cold prawns, wedges of avocado and thin strips of carrot, bell pepper and cucumber.
But they can be filled with all sorts of other things, such as sushi-grade pieces of tuna or other fish, small shrimp, crab meat, tofu, tempura vegetables and other types of fresh vegetables.
Just don鈥檛 overfill them, or the nori might tear when you roll your hand rolls.
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Prawn, Avocado and Vegetable Hand Rolls
Hand rolls, also called temaki, are a larger-format style of sushi where seasoned, cooked, cooled rice and fillings are rolled in nori into a cone shape and eaten with the hands.
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Preparation time: 40 minutes
Cooking time: About 20 minutes
Makes: 12 hand rolls
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1 1/4 cups sushi rice (see Note)
1 3/4 cups cold water, plus some for rinsing the rice
3 Tbsp rice vinegar
1 1/2 Tbsp granulated sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
6 sheets nori, halved crosswise
12 tsp mayonnaise
12 large, cooked, peeled, cold prawns, each halved lengthwise
1 ripe, medium avocado, quartered lengthwise, pulled apart, pitted, peeled and cut into 12 wedges
1/2 cup English cucumber, cut into thin, 5-cm-long strips
1/2 cup carrot, cut into thin, 5-cm-long strips
1/2 cup red bell pepper, cut into thin, 5-cm-long strips
鈥� soy sauce, wasabi paste and pickled ginger, to taste
Place the rice in a small pot (mine was 15 centimetres wide and 13 cm tall). Cover with 10 cm of cold water. Use your hands to rub the grains together to remove excess outer starch from the rice kernels. Drain the water from the rice.
Add the 1 3/4 cups of fresh cold water to the pot. Bring the rice to a boil over high heat, then turn the heat to its lowest setting. Cover and steam the rice until tender, about 15 minutes.
While the rice cooks, place the vinegar, sugar and salt in a second small pot. Bring to a boil for a few seconds and stir to dissolve the sugar. Remove from the heat.
When it鈥檚 cooked, spoon and spread the rice into a large, shallow-sided pan. Stir in the vinegar mixture, then cool the rice to room temperature.
To make a hand roll, set a half sheet of nori flat on a work surface. Moisten your hands lightly with cold water, then set and spread 1/4 cup of rice on one half of that sheet of nori (see step-by-step photos).
Spread 1 tsp of mayonnaise in a diagonal line down the centre of the rice. Now, if desired, spread some wasabi paste, to taste, on top of the mayonnaise.
Set an avocado wedge, a few cucumber, carrot and pepper strips, and two half prawns on top of the rice. Fold the top right corner of the nori over the rice and fillings.
Now tightly roll the nori into a cone shape. When you鈥檙e almost there, moisten the flap of nori with water, then finish rolling the nori and seal the cone.
Set the hand roll on a serving platter, then fill and roll the remaining nori and fillings into hand rolls as you did the first. Serve the hand rolls with soy sauce, pickled ginger and wasabi.
Eric Akis is the author of eight cookbooks. His columns appear in the Life section Wednesday and Sunday.
