Hey everyone!

I've just spent the evening with my friends, who all love to cook! We had a great time preparing our favorite meal, which is sushi. It's a traditional Japanese starter, which I think the most of you know. Anyway, why go to the Japanese restaurant, when you can easily make them on your own. Actually you can fill the rolls, which are wrapped in seaweed (nori), with everything you like. I prefer raw or smoked fish with cucumbers and avocado. Additionally I sometimes buy bean spreads. For serving, i put small bowls filled with soy sauce and pickled ginger.

Ingredients: 

• 2 cups uncooked short-grain white rice 
• some rice vinegar
• 3 tablespoons white sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 4 sheets nori seaweed sheets
• 1/2 cucumber, peeled, cut into small strips
• 1 avocado, cut into thin stripes
• 50 dag raw salmon, cut into stripes

Directions:

1. In a medium saucepan, bring 4 cups water to a boil. Add rice, and stir. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 20 minutes. In the meantime mix a little bit of the rice vinegar, sugar and salt and add it to the rice.
2. Center one sheet nori on a bamboo sushi mat and moisturize it with some rice vinegar. Also wet your hands. Spread a thin layer of rice on the sheet of nori and press it down a little bit. Take the cucumber stripes, avocado stripes, and salmon and arrange them in a line in the center of the rice. Lift the end of the mat, and gently roll it over the ingredients with little pressure. Roll it forward to make a complete roll. Repeat with all remaining ingredients.
3. Slice the long roll into 2 cm thick pieces.
4. Put them on a big plate for serving.

Hint: The rolling part is definitely the most difficult and it takes time to get a feeling for it. So don't give up, when they dont look really appetizing at first! 

Hope you will enjoy it!