California rolls were invented by the chef of a Japanese restaurant in the USA in 1973. He noticed that not all visitors like the fact that the strips of nori are located outside the rolls. The chef came up with the idea of putting them inside.
Cooking Japanese food at home
It is not difficult to make California rolls on your own. They will cost less than ready-made "store" and "restaurant". You can choose a very economical option - with crab sticks, but, of course, it is better to take natural crab meat.
Here's what the California roll recipe includes:
- 100 g of cooked sushi rice;
- 1 sheet of nori seaweed;
- 1 tsp flying fish roe;
- 2 slices of avocado;
- 1 tsp mayonnaise;
- 50 g of crab meat.
You will also need a mat, cling film and a bowl of water. Place the mat on the work surface, lay the plastic on it. Soak your hands in water, take rice. First, mold a "sausage" out of it, then distribute it on the film in an even layer in the shape of a rectangle so that its far edge is 1 cm larger than the nori leaf, and the other sides repeat the outlines of this algae. Place a nori sheet on top. It should cover almost all of the rice, leaving 1cm of rice uncovered at the far end.
Squeeze the mayonnaise in a thin stream into the middle of the algae leaf. Put the crab meat on it, placing it in one line. Place 2 avocado wedges on top of it.
Begin to wrap the mat away from you so that the food basket turns into a square roll. The rice will be on top. Sprinkle the flying fish roe evenly over the roll. Laminate it over the mat again. Dip the knife in water, cut the roll into 6 even pieces. Serve with ginger, wasabi and soy sauce.
Economy version of California rolls
If you do not have some ingredient or even several, then it is easy to replace them. So, instead of an avocado, you can take a fresh cucumber, replace the caviar of a flying fish with sesame seeds, take an ordinary round rice. As a last resort, you can use crab sticks instead of crab meat. You can replace the sushi mat with a regular bamboo mat, which costs less than 50 rubles at the supermarket.
If you have it ready-made sushi rice, then boil it yourself. Place it in a bowl first, cover with water. Rub the rice with your hands, passing it between your palms. Drain the liquid, take water again. In total, rinse it 3 times in this way.
Put a pot of water on the fire. Boil the rice with a stock. You can make more rolls from the leftovers. Let there be 1 glass of water. Then you need to take the same rice, but an incomplete glass. As soon as the water boils, add the cereal. Let the contents of the pot simmer, reduce heat to low, and cover the pot with a lid. Set a timer for 16 minutes.
After this time, turn off the heat, let the rice infuse under a closed lid for 15 minutes. After that, cool it down and make rolls.
