I found the recipe below for Cat Sushi and thought that all of my wonderful and ultra cuddly Christmasy fans might like to make it while they are on holiday and still full of Turkey, the really great news is that you don’t need a ‘Cat’ as one of the ingredients for Cat Sushi.
You will need a tiny bit of artistic flair and hands unused to handling large hammers, steel pressing machinery and other tough tools so I understand if you decide give this recipe a miss.
Cat Sushi
So if you are serious about creating a masterpiece in Sushi which as a lucky coincidence would have it is also a portrait of me please (I beg you) read the complete instructions before starting it will help both you and me because you will get the recipe right first time and not end up covered in Seaweed and I, thankfully, won’t have to repeat myself or clarify any perceived anomalies.
For one roll of sushi, you will need
A little more than one piece of Nori (Nori is the Japanese name for edible seaweed)
Some sushi rice around 6 tablespoons full
Black Sesame Powder
Canned Tuna (Tomato flavoured) to make the orange colour
Pickled ginger – for the pink colour
Soy sauce – for the brown colour
Cut you Nori in half, one bit is used to wrap around the outside of the sushi roll.
After that cut the other half of the seaweed into four equal pieces (not lengthwise to make four long strips but the other way to make the shape in the picture below).
Next you need to colour the rice. Do this by mixing some rice with whatever you’re using to colour your rice in a bowl. For each of the colours, you’ll only need about 2 large tablespoons of rice.
Now you can begin shaping the Sushi roll
First, make mini rolls using the small pieces of nori which we cut from the second half of the seaweed sheet. As a guide each roll should be 1/8th of the size of the original Seaweed sheet.
Carefully place a small amount of rice on the edge or the Seaweed and roll it up to make a thin roll. You are going to need 3 rolls of white rice and one roll of pink which is for the Cat’s mouth and you will need to make two of the white rolls smaller than the white and the pink ones by using less rice and rolling up tightly of course.
Now because Cat’s noses are smaller, we make need to make one roll a lot thinner do this if you use a little Black Pepper to colour the rice it will look a lot more like a Cat’s nose – a sort of light brown colour.
Now slice one of the white rolls and the pink rolls in half and carefully place the half sheet of nori onto your Sushi mat lengthwise, as we will be rolling ‘sideways.’
Spread some white, orange and black rice onto the nori in the pattern shown in the picture above. Make sure that the width of the black and orange stripes is the same as those of the semicircle rolls you made above and of course the white stripe in the middle should also be the same width.
Place the two white semicircle rolls facing upwards onto the red and black lines. Fill the area between them with white rice and then place another layer of rice above this (obviously I didn’t put the layer of rice on in the picture above, so the nose ended up on the eyes).
Place the dark brown ‘nose’ roll in right in the centre of the layer of rice.
Place both of the pink semicircles on top of the ‘nose’ facing downwards as shown. Then put a layer of rice over and around that so that the middle bit is a bit like a round mountain of rice.
Roll up the sushi using the mat then slice it up with a very sharp knife. If you need to, give the sushi a bit of a ‘massage’ to get it into the right shape.
Cut thin strips of nori and place them on the Sushi to make whiskers.
Using the two small white rolls from before, cut each into the same thickness as the Cat Sushi for the ears. then place two ears on each Cat Sushi and “hey presto” as rabbit interfering Magicians say – you are done and you will either have a tasty mess or with any luck a plateful of Cat Sushi. Do think of me when you are eating the good looking ones won’t you!
A HANDY TIPS
1. – If you are having trouble making clean cuts of your Sushi try this little tip. Moisten your knife with a mixture of water and Vinegar.
2. – Always cut Sushi quickly with one stroke.
3. – Your life will be easier if you wipe any sticky stuff off your blade after every cut.
For the more ambition Sushi makers.
I thought that you might like to see what one of my dear cuddly readers gave me for lunch the other day – “mmh mmh” was all this writer of masterpieces of feline literature could say but then I have heard it is rude to talk with ones mouth full!
