California "Futomaki"

I wanted to make California Maki for the Lenten break. But due to lack of ingredients and tools to make one.. it was postponed to last Sunday. 

A few Sundays back, I was browsing through Saizen, a daiso store in Robinsons Galleria, and I chanced upon plastic Sushi molds. There was a big one and a small one, specifically for the maki-type rolls. Thinking that we will stuff the rolls with mangoes and crabsticks, my mom and I opted for the larger molds (I will upload the photos later on...). Having those molds, I was excited to make my maki rolls! We finally completed the ingredients, or I thought so until the day I was gonna make them. 

Browsing through the Essential Guide to Japanese Cooking, I found a recipe on How to make Sushi Rice. I thought it was simple enough... Just cook the rice as directed on the package, add some mixture and "boom!" you have the sushi rice!

Apparently not.

Upon rinsing the grains and I had to add seaweeds, but since I didn't have that, I will just let it pass. Rice is still rice, right? When the rice is cooking, you have to prepare a wooden bowl... which I also didn't have so a glass pyrex will have to do. At least, I can say that I did have a wooden spatula! Having prepped those, you can now mix your vinegar mixture. 

Vinegar Mixture: 1 Tbsp rice vinegar, 1 Tbsp Sake (oops! I don't have this... time to substitute! I used rice wine), 1 Tbsp Sugar, 1 tsp salt. Mix it up! 

By the way, I'm really sorry I was not able to take photos of the step by step as my hands were kinda occupied. Oops! 

When the rice is cooked, transfer it to the pyrex and let it cool.. if you have nothing to do, you can fan the rice manually. When the rice is a bit cool, mix in the vinegar mixture and you will notice that the rice will become stickier and stickier. 

Prep your mangoes and kani and start making your maki using the maki mold. For this, I still recommend using the traditional bamboo roller lest you want to end up with Futomaki-looking California Maki. Haha!  When you work with the rice, make sure you wear gloves and make sure that you have a bowl of water near you so that you can dip your fingers once in a while to minimize the amount of sticky rice on your fingers. Once you have your rolls, cut it with a very sharp knife. Also, better to dip the knife in water so that the rice wont stick giving you crushed maki rolls. 

The only photo I was able to take was the final product.  Enjoy!

 **Sorry for the low quality photo. I just took it using my mobile phone.