Sushi has definitely become a huge trend, climbing in popularity with each passing year. I love the whole experience of going to a Japanese restaurant, sipping sake or tea, and watching the kimono clad waitresses shuffling around. Sometimes, for a split second, if I close my eyes, I might feel like I am in Kyoto armed with chopsticks awaiting my perfect hand rolled sushi. It never occurred to me that I could create this same feeling in my own kitchen. When I saw Blythe successfully rolling sushi, I thought what a great idea! I have a fairly high success rate in my kitchen and will try just about anything once. With pep in my step, I went off to gather my ingredients for a Blythe-inspired roll -- shrimp tempura, avocado, crab, and two different dipping sauces.

My first step was to make the sushi rice so that it had time to cool. I just followed the package instructions and I ended up with really good sticky sushi rice. The tempura is super easy to make also. You just dip each jumbo shrimp into seasoned flour, then into a bowl with one beaten egg, then into tempura rice crumbs and fry in vegetable oil until golden. Now, actually making the roll was a little nerve-racking. I didn’t have a sushi mat so I thriftily substituted two pieces of plastic wrap. Channeling my inner sushi guru, I timidly laid a piece of nori onto my plastic wrap, and then spread a layer of sushi rice on top. On the far end, I laid my tempura, crab, and avocado and a little wasabi across the length of the nori. I took a deep breath, and then just like a jellyroll, I started to tightly wrap the nori enclosing all my ingredients. I did this twice and then I was ready to get a little naughty. I spread a layer of rice onto the nori, I covered it with another piece of plastic wrap and flipped the entire sheet of nori with the rice so that the rice was on the bottom. Then, I added my fillings and ended up with an inside out roll which is often referred to as uramaki. Feeling confident and very hungry I used my sharpest knife to carefully cut my roll into 8 slices, said itadakimasu (bon appétit in Japanese) and dug in!

Not to toot my own horn, (Toot! Toot!) but I actually made decent sushi rolls! I am so excited to have a sushi making party where I instruct the guests on my newfound culinary skill and everyone gets to create their own roll! How fun would that be! Do any of you Naughty Kitchen fans have any favorite recipes to share? Shout them out below!