California Roll

The other day, we had some neighbors over for drinks to talk with them about their upcoming trip to the western U.S. They'll be visiting L.A., San Francisco, Las Vegas, and the Grand Canyon, plus a few other places in between. Since they know we lived in San Francisco before moving here, they wanted to talk to us about it.

Home-made California roll with toasted sesame seeds.

So I made some California rolls to have with glasses of cold rosé! It was a relatively hot day and we sat in the shade of our deck to snack, sip, and chat. These little sushi-like rolls are ubiquitous in California. They're made without raw fish, so they're pretty easy to do out here in the country where sushi-quality fish is not easy to find.

These are filled with cucumber, avocado, and a little smoked salmon. I made so much sushi rice that I was able to make eleven rolls. Each roll makes eight pieces, so that's eighty-eight pieces of California roll. We're still eating it.

We got most of the ingredients (nori sheets, sushi rice, wasabi powder, sesame seeds) on one of our forays to Tang Frères in Paris a while back. The cukes, avocado, and salmon came from the local supermarket. We served the rolls with soy sauce and sliced pickled ginger, also from our Paris shopping trip.

It turns out that our neighbors are on a guided tour, so they will end up seeing whatever the tour group goes to see. And they'll only be in San Francisco for two and a half days, so they'll get a pretty limited view of the place.