Korean Sushi (Kimbap)

   

Korean sushi single-handedly made spinach acceptable to Rosalind. 

"I don't mind spinach if it's mixed up with a bunch of things," she announced as she devoured the sushi. From then on, I had no choice but to always keep spinach in the fridge to mix up with anything and everything. For nine years, this poor leafy vegetable was despised and shunned; we had a lot of making up to do.

Korean sushi, the savior of spinach, was introduced to us a few months ago.  Rosalind, coming home from a play date, brought us a plateful of Kimbap. She said that she helped roll the sushi and her friend's mom wanted us to try them.  

Not too long after that, her friend had a Kimbap-making party which she attended unaccompanied by me. Baby Hugh kept me up the night before so I chose to spend my Sunday morning in my nice warm bed instead of an overcrowded kitchen full of preteens with sticky rice on their fingers and hair. (Well okay, I wasn't planning on going anyway but I ended up having an excuse for my antisocial inclinations). Most of her friends who attended had their mothers with them. She lately chastised me for not going with her because the other mothers were shown the tricks on what to do with the rice to make it extra sticky.  

I thought that sticky rice was sticky enough in its natural state. But I did agree that I missed out on a live sushi-making demonstration given by a stay-at-home mom who had been making Kimbap for her children's lunches for years. Consequently, when Rosalind asked if we could make Kimbap ourselves, I had to resort to Google for directions. 

Serious Eats and My Korean Kitchen provided the world with outstanding recipes for Korean Sushi. Out of sheer laziness, I chose not to repeat their thorough instructions here.  But I would share with you, unabashedly, pictures of our first attempt at Korean sushi. You might be able to pick up a pointer or two on what not to do.

Here we had everything all prepped and ready to roll.

We had short-grain rice (seasoned with salt and sesame oil), cucumber, carrots, pickled radish, sauteed spinach and strips of scrambled eggs.

Rosalind liked to spread her rice sparse and thin and she didn't believe in margins. Some rice stuck on the mat.

Here you see somebody rolling the sushi and forgetting to keep the bamboo mat outside the sushi. More rice got stuck on the mat.

After a roll or two, we got the hang of it.

Sushi rolling is actually pretty straight forward, if you're the type of person who pays attention to directions.

And so, next up on Rosalind's list is Spam musubi, which has rice, teriyaki sauce and a slice of fried spam wrapped up in nori. Maybe she'll let me tuck in sauteed spinach between the sticky rice and spam.