New Year's Sushi
New Year's Day is a Big Thing for my family. My grandparents hold a large New Year's party, and many of the aunts, uncles, cousins, and family friends come to eat and see everyone. Around thirty people go through, and that's the smaller, scaled down version of New Year's we've been doing for a while.
Each year my mom makes Makizushi in the style of her grandmother, my Grammy. We head over to my grandparent's house at seven in the morning. Early morning New Year's is the most quiet we ever see Los Angeles, and the drive is always part of the tradition.
Sushi can only be as good as its rice, so that's where everything starts. My grandfather wakes up early and starts the rice cookers so that the rice will be done when Mom arrives.
After the rice cools, it's seasoned with rice vinegar not only to give it flavor but to also keep it from clumping too much.
The large dish is actually Grammy's old washbasin. We had trouble finding it that morning, and until we did Mom felt something was wrong with the sushi.
Grammy's makizushi contains seven ingredients:
- Unagi eel, not pictured
- Mushrooms
- Kanpyō gourd shavings
- Carrots
- Fried egg
- Spinach
- Beni shōga red ginger
The mushrooms, kanpyō, and carrots are marinated beforehand.
A layer of rice is laid out on a sheet of roasted nori, and the ingredients placed in a neat row at one end.
Everything is carefully rolled up in a bamboo makisu.
The finished roll is then cut and served. The ends of the roll aren't as pretty, so we eat them ourselves. Such sacrifice.
The tray also contains inarizushi, where the contents are stuffed into deep fried tofu pouches, and some onigiri rice balls with and without furikake toppings.
We make a ton of food, and the rest of the family brings some more as the day goes on. By evening we've assembled a table of sashimi, tempura, fried wontons, ozoni mochi soup, my grandmothers special tofu salad, Aunt Margaret's chicken and Uncle Richard's pork. And, of course, a little bit of good sake shared with family and friends.
Happy New Year, everyone.