Fruit sushi – show time for the neighborhood get-together.

fruit sushi, catering-style~

Lesson learned today.  Don’t underestimate how much more energy and prep it takes cooking for more than 4-6 people, even if it’s not “true cooking”. 

 

Decided to impress the new neighbors by my culinary creations of fruit sushi.  Fresh summer fruit from the Torrance Farmers Market -√.  I thought I could whip everything up in an hour this morning and it certainly wasn’t the case.  I was under time crunch, bit frantic and sweaty like a little piggy, feeling like I was on an episode of Iron Chef with the minutes ticking.  What if I show up with the fruit sushi at the park when everyone’s already left the party?…that would be bad~ 

 

The major culprit in today’s fruit sushi was the rice. Thought, “I’ll use regular coconut milk to make the rice so that it has an intense coconut flavor! ”  Well – who would have thought that sushi rice would not be sticky using regular coconut milk?!@  It’s the natural coconut oil from the milk, way too rich to keep the rice together and sticky.  So here I am trying to make the sushi rice so that I can layer them with the beautiful fruit and it just won’t gel together. NOTE TO SELF – Use LIGHT coconut milk next time.  There IS such a thing as TOO MUCH coconut.

 

Toothpicks to the rescue – it’d have looked so much better without the dang toothpicks.  But I think they still turned out quite nice and very “sushi-like”, if I may say so myself:) 

 

Big shout-out to my love who was an awesome sous-chef, melting the chocolate, cutting the watermelon, taking the pix and most of all – keeping me sane through it all.  I probably made way too big deal out of it, especially since everyone else brought Costco favorites, pasta salads and supermarket goodies but I think it was a great practice run for the real thing, whatever that ends up being at this point. 

 

For those of you who may be curious to see what these fruit sushi are – a quick description from top down.

- Yellow peach with blood orange “masago” caviar

- White nectarine with balsamic blackberries

- Watermelon with agave and mint

- Mozzarella with heirloom tomato, basil and balsamic

- Brown sugar banana with sesame seeds (my new favorite, an “out of the box” thinking by my love.  Doesn’t it look like Unagi???? the eel?)

(repeat)

 

Now that I got the rice down, please note that I’ll be taking orders for your next party;) 

 

Made with two tablespoons of love; love for food, love for life~

 

–chef kelly