Food is one of the best ways to bring people together and it’s an innate human tradition I definitely agree with. So when the opportunity arose to put together a friendsgiving for my long standing group of first year college dorm friends, I took to some prior inspiration to revisit a feat I had undertaken once in the past. This time, bigger and better than ever. I’m talking about a giant sushi roll also known as the sushiritto.
Setting the Stage
Like with the quesarito before it, bigger was a major goal, but it also had to evolve into much more given all my cooking experiences throughout the years. Grander in both scale and flavor profile. The visual impact of a roll about the width of my head (I really couldn’t come up with a better comparison) sounded like a good start given that I wanted to still be able to roll the thing. As for deciding on the ingredients, I pulled out all the stops and went with my most tried and true method: pacing down the aisles of my favorite groceries a few hours before the actual event (yes, groceries plural as I seem to be incapable of composing a single dish without visiting at least three groceries). So as I paced down the aisles accumulating a laundry list of concepts and ingredients new and old, everything started to come together.
So what’s actually in it…
I settled on yellowtail as the centerpiece to build around. This would help combat the battle and confusion between proteins I find so common in most American sushi rolls. For sauce, I love the play of miso and wasabi with yellowtail and it wouldn’t be a sushiritto without some signature Japanese Kewpie mayo. Now that’s a lot to choose from, so I figured there was no reason I couldn’t just mix them all together with some honey.
The rest of the accompaniments were a blend of new and old. From sushirittos I made years ago, I chose tempura green onions, seaweed salad, masago, buttered kanikama, nori furikake, avocado, and ginger. It’s like they say, “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.” Though sometimes I’ll admit I just want to save myself from re-pacing through all those aisles of the grocery store.
And because I am also almost incapable of not trying something new, bonito, my ever growing fondness of dashi and yuzu, some Russian caviar I had to finish up, a sprig of freshness from Japanese mitsuba, tart red shiso, and the clean, defined spice of Thai chili join the mix to round out the sushiritto’s flavors. With all the actors at hand, it was time for the composition.
Putting it all together
With the all the ingredients on hand and the dinner three hours away, preparations finally began. A relatively easier feat given the lack of cooked ingredients. At least it would have been if I had full use of both my hands (I sliced my finger preparing some chips for an ongoing project). Fortunately, this was a friendsgiving so I had the power of friendship on my side. Or in less euphemistic terms, I could offload all the grunt work while I focused on composing all the flavors I needed. Friends are the best.
I went with a 4×4 seaweed base as that seemed like the right size to give it the girth of my head. I also just like the term 4×4. From there the foundation would be the sushi rice followed by the crab mixture and nori furikake to ensure a certain level of decadence and consistent flavor with each bite. Afterwards, the placement of the main protein, yellowtail, as all ingredients would be paired with it. The yellowtail would then be dressed with a homemade yuzu ponzu, dashi, torched on one side to give textural and temperatural contrast, and topped with some Russian caviar I had on hand. Next came a rotation of decisions based on color and flavor going from the tempura green onions, masago, avocado, sauces, and bonito. Finally the remaining garnishes of mitsuba, ginger, Thai Chili, and red shiso.
And the result…
I’m sure by this point you’re filled with questions like “how did you eat it?” and “isn’t that a lot of rice?” but when there is a will there is a way and sweating those details isn’t my style. There’s a method to my madness, which means I had planned ahead to solve any of those problems by A) brute forcing my way to make portions using foil and a sharp knife and B) making sure the resulting giant roll slice would have every bite be as enticing as possible to create a worthwhile marathon of entertaining flavors.
But let’s focus less on the semantics and more on the flavor composition. As great as yellowtail is, I wanted to keep cost down so there was only about 2 pounds in it (the whole thing was probably around 20 pounds). This meant all the other ingredients had to be standout enough to rise up to the challenge of providing robust flavors in its absence. As I alluded to earlier, the base was the garlic shouyu butter kanikama with the sushi rice, seaweed, and nori furikake. This, in it of itself, gave a hefty flavor profile but would get boring after a few bites. So in comes the tempura green onions to give texture and a sharp green onion flavor alongside a dash of salty sweetness for the masago. The torched yellowtail was then reinforced with a pair of sauces that resulted in notes of wasabi, mayo, miso, honey, and unagi sauce, and then finally coupled with caviar and bonito to bring an intense wave of umami despite its smaller ratio. All of this coupled together to form interleaving waves of flavor between the base layer and the more aggressive flavors from the yellowtail and its accompaniments.
All that would be good, but not enough to be great. This is where the supporting role of the remaining ingredients comes in. Their role was to provide yet another layer of security in preventing a bored palate by presenting the most complementary bold fresh flavors I could think of. They ranged from a fresh greens flavor from the mitsuba, sharp spice from the Thai Chili, herbal citrus from the red shiso, and the tang of sweet pickled root from the ginger. I placed one to two lines of these ingredients so they would come in as surprises randomly between bites to confuse the palate and keep everything fresh. A necessary break in between the rush of waves between the base layer, the yellowtail, and its supporting actors.
All is well
A more impromptu event finalized a mere few days out, but overall a successful display of food and friendship benefiting of the title of friendsgiving. The sushiritto delivered on being a unique experience aptly compared to that of an amazing poke bowl as a giant sushi roll. Only thing left was a night filled with many drinks in celebration. Or in other words the other innate human tradition bringing people together.
Epicurean Experience 