What do you do if you are booked to go to Sushi School at Yo! Sushi in Manchester Arndale on the same night that you’re due to go to Manchester Whisky Club where the theme is Japanese whiskies?
Yes, that’s right, you do both. The pairing isn’t actually a new thing – in fact there are restaurants devoted to matching whiskies with sushi across the world. Honest. And I do love sushi.
The Arndale is holding it’s annual food event, this year entitled Get Your Eat On and, as ever there are a whole host of offers for you to take advantage of, with vouchers available online and in store during August.
Yo! Sushi has more than one offer available for you, Sushi School is one of them, offering groups the chance to learn how to make it. Reassuring myself I wasn’t mad trying to do both one one night I set off to meet the other bloggers and was relieved to see I was among friends, so if I was going to bodge this, I was going to do it in good company. At least they wouldn’t laugh too hard at my efforts.
Charlie and Lawrence were our hosts and after Lawrence had demonstrated how to slice fish for ngiri and maki and which parts of the fish should be used for which type of sushi and sashimi, it was time for us to get messy.
Nori, flat papers of dried seaweed appeared in front of us, along with bowls of sushi rice which had been cooked, cooled and had sushi vinegar added. Popping on some plastic gloves and squirting a little kewpie mayonnaise onto our hands (sushi rice is notoriously sticky), we set to work.
First up was a cucumber maki roll, with sesame seeds. Pressed tightly, it was clear my cucumber was trying to escape. Keeping some of these for Whisky Club, I scoffed the rest, I did mention I love sushi didn’t I?
We then progressed to a California roll, or hand roll, in this case featuring seafood sticks, avocado and sesame seeds.
Onto futomaki – one I’ve since tried at home with tuna and swordfish.
With cucumber, carrot and a type of sweet egg omelet in this one, it was much easier to roll than the futomaki, or perhaps I’d just gotten better.
Our final make was a gunkanmaki or warship roll (once made, it looks like a little battleship). Little packets of nori that hide blocks of rice and are filled to overflowing with, in this case, roe.
It’s not because they’re the easiest to make.
I enjoyed this so much, a group of girls and I are doing it as my birthday party – but it will involve Prosecco and sake, as opposed to cola and fizzy water. That one really will get messy.
You can take advantage of this and any of the offers in the Arndale from 1st August.
As for the whiskies? Oh I’ll save those for tomorrow – but let’s just say, I think this idea has legs…