- 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
Kelly, I saw an apple with a piece cut out of it and shaped like a butterfly and then adorned back on the apple. I thought of you when I saw it. How can I email that you you?
Hi, Susan.
Sounds lovely! Why don’t you email it to chefkellykim at gmail? Thanks! btw – curious how you find me?…