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rushthatspeaksA useful book on exactly what the title indicates. I'd call the ingredients more mildly fusion than totally authentic, but it all looks tasty. Covers regular sushi rice, brown rice, using omelet as a wrapper, and every major sushi shape I've ever seen-- cones, rolls, inside-out rolls, pinwheel rolls, nigiri, rolls-within-other-rolls, and the kind where you have a base of rice and make an enclosure on the top with nori so you can put a dollop of something liquidish on it, among others. There's a fair selection of fillings mentioned, everything from seasoned gourd to asparagus with sesame sauce to something resembling wasabi guacamole, and there's a section of dessert sushi involving rolls made of rice flavored with lemon or coconut and topped with fruit.
I suspect that some readers may find it easy to underestimate the amount of practice and patience needed for the more difficult rolls due to the minimalist language of the instructions, which have about the same level of detail for every recipe no matter how involved, and which don't specify difficulty levels. Having spent some time making homemade sushi, my personal experience indicates that even simple rolls need some practice before you get them looking really nice, and things like the square roll that is composed of other rolls in such a way as to make a pretty internal pattern are going to be serious technical challenges even for someone expert at easier rolls. However, I do think you can tell by looking at the recipe whether a roll is going to be hard, although probably not with precision, which is why I'd have appreciated some kind of internal difficulty rating.
The standard versions of the recipes use bonito flakes in stock and egg for omelet, but there's a fully vegetarian stock substitute recommended, and it would be pretty easy to make anything in this book vegan. There are suggestions listed after each recipe for fish fillings you could use to make more conventional sushi out of it; I appreciate this sort of versatility.
This isn't going to get you making restaurant-quality sushi, but you're almost certainly not going to wind up doing that at home anyway. Our goal with our home sushi is 'not as good as restaurant, much better than sushi-in-a-box', and that's readily achievable, and this book will help you with it.
I suspect that some readers may find it easy to underestimate the amount of practice and patience needed for the more difficult rolls due to the minimalist language of the instructions, which have about the same level of detail for every recipe no matter how involved, and which don't specify difficulty levels. Having spent some time making homemade sushi, my personal experience indicates that even simple rolls need some practice before you get them looking really nice, and things like the square roll that is composed of other rolls in such a way as to make a pretty internal pattern are going to be serious technical challenges even for someone expert at easier rolls. However, I do think you can tell by looking at the recipe whether a roll is going to be hard, although probably not with precision, which is why I'd have appreciated some kind of internal difficulty rating.
The standard versions of the recipes use bonito flakes in stock and egg for omelet, but there's a fully vegetarian stock substitute recommended, and it would be pretty easy to make anything in this book vegan. There are suggestions listed after each recipe for fish fillings you could use to make more conventional sushi out of it; I appreciate this sort of versatility.
This isn't going to get you making restaurant-quality sushi, but you're almost certainly not going to wind up doing that at home anyway. Our goal with our home sushi is 'not as good as restaurant, much better than sushi-in-a-box', and that's readily achievable, and this book will help you with it.
