On the other hand, I also love spam. You know, the ones come with metal cans, not those from the emails. A couple decades ago, I was thinking: what if we could get the best out of both worlds? Since, Spam Sushi was born!
For sushi, I don't need any youtube video to follow. It was a long time ago, I might have learned it from a friend verbally and known it by heart since. I don't care if I'm using the short grain rice; I usually use whatever rice I have in my kitchen. In my case, usually it means the long one. I used to use a special vinegar for sushi, now, as long as it's light color vinegar, I'd use it. When the rice is cooked, while still hot, I would spread some vinegar onto the rice, stir well and balance the sourness with some white sugar. Beforehand, I would slice the spam, cucumber and carrots into strips. Last but not least, I would buy some rice seasoning and seaweed sheets online or from a local asian supermarket.
To assembly a sushi roll, I use a bamboo rolling mat. First, I take a black seaweed sheet out from the package, lay it on top of the bamboo rolling mat. Then, I spread the rice evenly and thinly on the seaweed sheet followed by a generous layer of the rice seasoning. After that, I lay two strips of spam head-to-toe because the seaweed sheet is usually twice as long, followed by two strips of cucumber and carrot, also head-to-toe. As a last step, I roll the bamboo mat such that all the ingredients are tightly packed within the seaweed sheet. After that, I repeat the same steps until I run out of the ingredients or patience, whichever comes sooner.
To serve, I usually wet both sides of the knife before cutting the sushi into pieces, and I would repeat wetting the knife after a few cuts. This is to prevent the rice from sticking on the knife and ruin the subsequent cuts. For best presentation, I usually trim out the edge pieces of the each sushi roll and make those disappear entirely in my stomach :)
In the previous blog, I mentioned I followed Inga Lam's homemade dumpling video for the potstickers. For wontons, I followed the same recipe for the ingredients/fillings. Instead of making the homemade dumpling skin, I bought a couple of wonton skin packages from an Asian supermarket. From the pictures, you can tell I was doing the method #6 for wonton wrapping from the "How to wrap wonton" video.
Hmmm... yum!
Youtube:
So, I followed her recipes, including the skin and fillings, and made some potstickers. From the picture above, you could clearly see some burns. That was definitely something I needed to improve upon. On the other hand, some actually loved the burns and their extra crispiness. Maybe the burn was a feature, not a bug after all :)
Youtube video:
