The first time I ever made sushi was a nightmare. I was a senior in college and had just gotten into the whole sushi craze. Granted I was a semi-vegetarian at the time, so I was only eating the veggie sushi, but even now, it's that combo of rice and seaweed that really makes a good sushi roll.

So I tried making it with one of my housemates named Dave. And if you ever make sushi on your own, let me give you just one piece of advice: Do NOT use Uncle Ben's rice. Y'see, the key to sushi is the awesome sticky rice you make. And yes, it's not just rice, but a mixture of rice wine vinegar and sugar that's poured onto the rice to create the sticky sweet taste that holds it together. Except, it doesn't work on Uncle Ben's rice, which has built its reputation on non-sticky rice. But we were young. And in college. And just plain stupid. Plus, it's all we had in the house so we figured it'd work. What we ended up with were half-burnt chunks of nori sheets, covered with various flakes of wet vinegary rice. In on way whatsoever did these things resemble a roll. Heck, the only way you could tell it was sushi was the black and white color. My memory's failing a bit, but I believe my wife (college sweetheart at the time) was there, either helping us or more likely laughing at us and refusing to taste the things when we were done. All I remember is her repeatedly asking us why we used Uncle Ben's rice. Sigh.

Nowadays, the two of us make sushi a lot more often (Sorry, Dave. That's what you get for living a few states away...). And she's one heckuva sushi maker. We don't really mess around with the fish (though, occasionally I'll buy a nice hunk of tuna or salmon), but we make some awesome veggie rolls using cucumbers, avocado, carrots, oshinko and if we can make a special trip to the Japanese mart, kanpyo, which is the sweet japanese squash. (sooo goood). It's actually a lot of fun to make and a great group activitiy, especially since it makes tons of rolls. I'm fairly inept at making the rolls, but I definitely make up for it with my excellent cutting style, and more importantly, my eating technique.

You don't need to be a sushi chef or even amateur one like myself to take advantage of this Chef's Catalog coupon:

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