Sunday Night Dinner With The Hawthornes And Marion.

It's Sunday night and Marion, Mr. Hawthorne, and I are making our interpretations of a quasi Vietnamese roll and a bastardized California roll. Or was it a spring roll? Marion tried to explain the differences to me, but Rosie, being somewhat slow at times, just didn't get it. Whatever you call them, please enjoy.

Ingredients for my roll: shrimp, carrot, green onion, cucumber, green, yellow, and red peppers, avocado,

clover sprouts, bean sprouts, and the Sushi rice is cooking.

I prepared a dipping sauce: 4 TB Tamari (premium soy sauce) 2 TB rice vinegar 1/2 tsp sesame oil 2 TB toasted sesame seeds 1 large garlic clove 1 piece ginger (approximately same size as garlic) green onion I keep my ginger frozen, so I just took out one chunk. I nuked it for about 20 seconds then I can easily squeeze the juice out. Mince garlic clove and de-joosed ginger and slice green onion. Mix all together.

We also had a Szechwan sauce and wasabi sauce.

Here's the short grain sushi rice. Add in a few tablespoons of rice vinegar.

I very thinly sliced the cuke, carrots, peppers, green onion, and avocado. I let the avocado sit in lime juice so it wouldn't turn brown.

I'll be using the rice/tapioca sheets on the left and Mr. Hawthorne and Marion will be using the Nori sheets. Why Ticky, isn't RED ROSE your stripper name?

Marion spreads a layer of rice over her Nori.

I almost forgot some pickled ginger.

I soaked the sheets in water for a few seconds until pliable.

A layer of rice and some rice vinegar.

Then some shrimp strips. I sliced the shrimp down the length of the body.

A little bit of everything went on. Carefully roll up.

If you like, you could use that faux krab krap instead of real shrimp.

You might want a bit of wasabi on it.

Mr. Hawthorne rolls up shrimp, rice, avocado, and toasted sesame seeds.

Slice the Nori rolls.

Nori rolls with pickled ginger and wasabi.

And here are my rolls.

Here's my plate. I poured a little of the Tamari mixture in the center, with some Szechwan at the bottom, and two different Wasabi sauces on the right. The darker green is from a jarred mixture and is fairly bland. The lighter wasabi was made from powdered wasabi and water and will blow your nose off. Excellent stuff. Marion edumacated me: Most all wasabi sauce sold in this country is merely horseradish, mustard, and green food coloring. Wasabi, or Japanese horseradish, is actually a root vegetable and I may look into sources to see if I can grow this. I have grown horseradish, but that stuff spread all over my garden.

I loved this meal. Light, delicious. Easy to make. Fun. Lots of flavors and textures. Excellent.