Art of Cooking Day 7

Charlie McGill

Ms. Novak, Ms. Mayhew

J-Term: Art of Cooking

1.15.19

Today was sushi day at Art of Cooking J-Term, and the first day we were at the MDC. I would also say this was our most relaxing day yet, which was amazing and a well needed break from the stress and mayhem of the kitchen. My cooking group (Brooks, John, Gabe, and I) decided the day before to make shaggy dog rolls, which is sushi with rice, shrimp, crab, chipotle mayo, and one other sauce, which I forget the name of. The day started off with open work time on our research projects, where we had to outline the variables of our project, our experiment, and our constant. The goal of writing all these things down was to be on the same page as Ms. Mayhew and the rest of the chefs, so we could make sure that our experiment was on the right track and we could continue. After this work time, we began to make our sushi. We started off making the rice after a demonstration from chef Averil. My groups rice was made from 3 spoonfuls each of vinegar and Aji-Mirin, seaweed, and rice seasoning. Every group had relatively the same rice, besides slight differences in the amounts of ingredients to match what the groups tastes were. After the rice was made, groups got to work on their sauces and sushi. At first, my whole group was making our sauce (chipotle mayo), but we soon realized that was incredibly inefficient so we split ourselves up. Gabe didn't want to make a shaggy dog roll, so he went off to make his own, John went to go start on his sushi, while Brooks and I finished up the chipotle mayo, since we both liked different temperatures of spicy. After the mayo was to my liking, I went to start rolling my sushi. First, I took a big piece of seaweed and put a thin layer of rice on it, before adding shrimp to the upper part of the sushi. wrapping it in plastic and rolling it. After the roll was nice and tight, I placed pieces of shredded crab on top, before rolling it once more to hold the crab in place. After this, I was done with making my sushi! Next, I cut the roll and plated it, in a half circle with seaweed salad and ginger in the middle. Next I added the chipotle mayo and the other sauce on top of the sushi, and after cleaning I was ready to eat!
After eating my sushi, the rest of my day was very relaxed. I wasn't in cleaning crew and had already cleaned my plate, so I hung out with some friends who are in other J-Terms (who were eating lunch don't worry Maestra) and played basketball with Brooks, before finishing this blog and starting research on my food science project.
I was very surprised at how easy today was in terms of cooking; I thought that sushi was going to be one of the harder days but it turned out to be the most relaxed. I think the reason for this is because we didn't have to cook any fish or any rice, just roll it in with the sushi. I was very pleased with my meal anyway, as it was delicious and surprisingly filling. I would love to make sushi at home, as I don't have it very often but it really is a fantastic food. Overall score: 9/10