Salmon, tuna and sea-bass nigiri

• 30 minutes to prepare • Serves 4

Let's sushi again 

So you’ve made your vinegar mix, cooked your rice, mixed your vinegared rice, grated your wasabi and prepared your fish. Now all that’s left is to form the final nigiri by sandwiching wasabi with rice and fish. A simple task right?

The final step of shaping nigiri was something I always took for granted until I started making nigiri.
One aspect of the Japanese dining that is different from western dining experience has to be the showmanship. From ramen bars, tempura counters and high end sushi restaurant, chefs cater to small groups of people at a time, where each item of food is made meticulously in front of the customers, where they can watch and scrutinise every moment and action, whether it was graceful gesture or a clumsy mistake.
Even if the portion of rice to fish was correct, people’s experience of eating the nigiri is multi sensory, people eat with both their eyes and mouths. Try to bear that in mind when practicing nigiri for yourself.

In terms of size, a single piece of nigiri needed to be eaten in one single bite. And the proportion of rice to fish needs to be correct. As a guideline, each piece of nigiri contains around 10g of rice, and the rice should be small enough to be wrapped around with fish (Not like what you would typically see in pictures, where the fish is on top of the rice).

The fish should be draped over the rice, hugging it like a warm blanket. If the fish is unable to do so, it either means there is too much rice or too little fish.

All this said and warned about, are you ready for the challenge?

Here are ingredients for a 4-serving recipe:

300 g sushi rice (recipe is here)
100 g salmon fillet, raw or smoked

100 g tuna fillet, raw or smoked

100 g seabass fillet, raw

15 g rice vinegar

wasabi

1. Slice salmon, tuna and seabass fillets. Remove the skin and slice the fishes into small rectangular slices (7cm x 3cm, with thickness of 0.5 cm). Don’t worry if they are not perfectly rectangle as we can adjust the shape later. Save any end pieces to eat them as sashimi later
2. Prepare hand vinegar mixing 1 tablespoon of rice vinegar and 1 table spoon of water in a small bowl to make hand vinegar (called tezu), which we will use to wet our hands. Also, put wasabi in a separate small bowl
3. Wet your hands, palm and fingers, with hand vinegar
4. Make a small ball of rice. The rice ball does not need to be perfectly shaped at this stage as we will shape it later once we assemble it with salmon. Be careful not to squeeze too hard
5. Put wasabi on fish fillets: take a piece of salmon, tuna or seabass and put wasabi in the center with your finger. The wasabi will serve as a glue, not to mention that it will also add a touch of spiciness
6. Place the rice on the fish. Place the rice ball on top of the fish fillet, and press down gently with fingers
7. Flip the sushi and shape the sides with your fingers to make it into an oval shape

Nutrition Facts are detailed in the table below. Data is provided per serving.