Keith-san Sushi Chef!!!

So I skipped another week. Big deal. I'm tired. And sometimes when your hung ove...er, tired, on your day off, the last thing you want to do is sit at a computer for an hour.

And yes, last weekend was the Mid Winter Dinner feast. It went really well. I'm currently gathering some pictures together to show that off. Everybody pitched in from setting the tables to prepping to washing dishes. Great feast. I'll post that soon.

In the meantime, I played Sushi chef this week with a sushi dinner in the bar. I learned how to do this from Diane, the woman who worked here this past summer and trained me before she left on the last boat. Let's take a look...


First you need a sushi board. I don't know the technical term. Bamboo sushi wrap thing. Make sure you wrap it in cellophane to keep it clean. You don't have to but it cuts down on cleaning up and cross contamination if your making more than on kind of sushi.

Fold the corners in.

Sushi rice is different than regular rice. More starchy. Cook with a 1:1 ratio rather than 2:1. Meaning 1 cup of rice to 1 cup of water. Leave it covered on the stove over low heat for about 40 minutes. Crunchy rice sucks. This batch didn't work out the best and was a little al dente. But no matter. It's sushi in Antarctica! And cooking rice here is a bitch anyway. It was easier with the elevation and dryness of Pole to cook rice. I don't know what it is. Anyway, add one cup of rice vinegar and one cup of sugar...

...fan the rice with a plate or something to help it cool...

...make sure all your ingredients are laid out in front of you for easy access. This process can be a pain so you want it to go quick.

Lay the seaweed out on the sushi-bamboo-wrap-thing...

...moisten it with water so when you roll it, it sticks to itself...

...put a glob of rice on half the seaweed and press it down...

...so it lays nice and flat on the seaweed.

Put your desired filling on top of the rice. In this case it's smoked salmon and cream cheese...

...begin rolling...

...tightening as you go until...

...you have a perfectly rolled sushi roll.

Next we take it up to the bar...

...where we cut it and plate it on a fancy little sushi table.









There are four kinds of sushi here, even a tofu carrot avocado sushi for the vegetarians. It gets put in the middle of the table...

...so everybody can gather around and move around to get what they want.





Bede, Chris and Sean wait their turn while SteveO goes for a piece off camera.

I made 90 total rolls of sushi and there was some left at the end of the night. But everyone did a pretty good job of destroying what was put in front of them. Rumor has it that the great Neal Scheibe had a total of 50 pieces!!! How he is such a skinny bastard, I'll never know!

When the service is over I get to unwind with my new glasses.

Sushi night was fun and we'll probably do it one more time before the boat comes back. Stay tuned for more food fun this week. I'll get a MidWinter blog together. Later!