Salmon and Tuna Roll under Tobiko
it's sushi time again! everyone invited
This is the one that looks like a restaurant, and almost all of that is the tobiko — flying fish roe, which costs about eight dollars a jar, keeps for weeks and turns anything orange and glossy and expensive-looking.
The technique worth learning is the fan. Cut the roll, then press the whole line of pieces over with the flat of the knife so they lean against each other like a toppled stack of coins. Thirty seconds and it is the difference between eight pieces of sushi and a plate.
Buy the fish from somewhere that sells it to be eaten raw and ask them when it came in. That is the entire food-safety conversation and it is a short one.
- Makes
- 2 rolls
- Hands-on
- 45 minutes
- Fish
- Sashimi grade
- Finish
- Fanned, not lined up
What you need
The roll
- 3 cups seasoned sushi rice, cooled
- 4 sheets nori
- 1 cucumber, in batons (from my garden)
- 1 avocado, half for inside and half sliced for the top
On top
- 6 oz sashimi-grade salmon, sliced thin on the angle
- 6 oz sashimi-grade tuna, sliced thin on the angle
- 1/3 cup tobiko
- Eel sauce
- Thin lemon slices, optional
How it goes
1 — Rice seasoned warm and cooled to body temperature
Vinegar, sugar and salt folded through hot rice with a cutting motion, then cooled. Cold rice from the fridge goes hard and chalky and no roll made with it is any good.
2 — Slice the fish on a sharp angle, thin
A long sharp knife drawn through in one stroke rather than sawed. Slices cut at about thirty degrees are wide enough to drape over a piece of roll.
3 — Roll rice-out, with plastic on the mat
Nori on plastic wrap on the mat, rice spread to the edges, flipped, filling along the near edge, rolled firmly. The plastic stops the rice welding itself to the bamboo.
4 — Lay the fish along the top of the whole roll
Before cutting, not after. Slices overlapped down the length of the uncut roll, then a sheet of plastic over them and the mat pressed down gently to make them stick.
5 — Cut through the fish and the roll together
Plastic left on, wet knife, eight pieces. Cutting through everything at once is why the topping stays put.
pro tip — Wet the blade and wipe it between every single cut. A knife with rice on it drags and tears instead of slicing.
6 — Fan it with the flat of the blade
Plastic off, then the line of pieces pushed over sideways with the knife so they lean against each other in a long fan. This is the restaurant move and it takes thirty seconds.
7 — Tobiko heaped on, sauce in lines
A spoonful of roe on each piece or heaped along the fan, then eel sauce drawn across the plate in dark lines with a spoon.
One jar of tobiko makes four plates look like that. Best eight dollars in the fridge. LFG.