Sushi has always been one of my favourite foods, and even years ago before I was a vegetarian or vegan the avocado rolls at Yo Sushi were my sushi order of choice. Today I decided to make sushi rolls but without the rice, although my sister & mum had some with rice so I’ll include the recipe for that too. Nori sheets are actually really inexpensive at £1.50 for a pack of 10, and I rolled mine by hand without any need for a sushi mat. Also, the rice we used was normal basmati white rice, but cooked so that it was sticky rather than fluffy. I know sushi normally uses a special type of rice but I don’t think it’s all that necessary if you’re just making them at home.
For my rolls, I mashed together 2/3 of an avocado (could’ve used a full one but we only had one left between the three of us), and added Nando’s Peri Peri marinade (the sauce is better but we didn’t have any in!), and also Spirulina powder as it is a superfood and has loads of vitamins and minerals, as well as being a highly concentrated protein source, but I hate the taste of the stuff in smoothies. With avocado and nori though, it tasted really good, but is by no means a necessary addition to this.
After mashing it all together I spread it out on the nori sheet before adding chopped red peppers and sauerkraut. I meant to take a picture of this bit but I completely forgot! Then I rolled it up (slowly & gently as the nori can rip) into a long roll. At this point I should’ve refrigerated it before attempting to cut into little sushi pieces but I was too hungry so attempted to cut it straight away, which made quite a mess. It still tasted good though. Really, really good.
Sorry about how unappealing the second picture looks :s
And now onto the with rice version…
To cook the rice so that it’s sticky, you need to add less water and stir it a lot before leaving to simmer until most of the water is boiled off. Then drain off the excess and leave it to cool before spreading evenly onto a nori sheet (although leave a little bit of a gap on the opposite side to where you start rolling, because the filling squishes out). You could also chop the avocado instead of mashing it, as the rice is providing the moisture, but my sister decided to mash her avocado up and spread it out over the rice before rolling. The bit nearest to the camera is where you need to leave a gap, but you don’t really need one along the left side where you can see my sister left one. She just wouldn’t listen to me and ended up with the end of her roll having no filling. After this picture she spread the avocado out over the rice as evenly as possible.
We put the roll into the fridge for about 15 minutes and then cut it and it actually worked pretty well, and added it to a salad.
The obvious condiment to have with this would be soy sauce, but balsamic vinegar would also taste nice or even more peri peri sauce.
Etc. 