3/24/2011 - Sushi

The cruising community is a funny thing. You meet cruising couple A who introduce you to cruising couple B. You sort of know couple A but really don't know couple B at all. You get to know couple A better but then they hoist their sails and head off to somewhere else. Now the direct connection between you and couple B is gone. But, with luck, you hit it off with couple B anyway.

So it went for us. David and Carolyn from s/v Aztec, were just up the dock from us at Marina del Palmar here in La Paz. We enjoyed many hours of good visiting with them in their oh-so-comfortable cockpit. Somewhere along the line, Dave and Marge from s/v Kievit joined in. Dave and Marge are from the same Stockton Sailing Club that David and Carolyn belonged to. Further, Kievit is the same boat as Aztec except that Aztec has a center cockpit and Kievit has an aft cockpit. So, anyway, David and Carolyn introduced us to Dave and Marge.

Last weekend, Aztec departed for Mazatlan. We probably won't see them again until late April or early May. However, during the time they were here, they had enough gatherings on Aztec that we now sort of knew Dave and Marge from Kievit. Last week, Dave and Marge invited Lulu and I over to learn how to make sushi. Today we got together to do just that.

We got to Kievit about 4:15 this afternoon. Dave and Marge had assured us that they had everything needed and we didn't need to bring anything. We brought beer anyway.

Everybody had a job. Marge was cooking the sticky rice, Lulu and Dave were cutting up the ingredients, and I was the documentarian, taking pictures. When we arrived, Dave was busy trying to skin these little octopus tentacles. No easy feat. Lulu broke out our cutting board and knife and joined in. As the skin comes off the octopus, it apparently sort of melds to the cutter's skin and is a bear to wash off.

But Lulu and Dave persevered and cut up octopus, yellow-fin tuna, dorado, scallops, shrimp (which Marge sauteed with garlic), cucumbers, carrots, radishes, avocados, scallions, etc.

After the rice was all cooked, it was time to do the actual assembly. Marge showed Lulu how to lay out the nori (seaweed), arrange the fillings, and then roll it up. First were California rolls.

Lulu and Marge rolled while Dave sliced.

After the California rolls there were rolls with octopus, marinated yellow fin tuna, etc. Also, there were these little mounds (I'm sure they have an appropriate Japanese name) of rice with scallops, shrimp, and dorado. When they were done, we had quite an array:

Now came the best part; we got to eat all this stuff. Wasabi and soy sauce were mixed in little bowls, beers and wine were replenished and, chopsticks in hand, we attacked. It was SO good! There was a ton of sushi so we could just kind of take our time eating. The wasabi opened areas of my sinuses that hadn't seen the light of day in years. Dave took a couple of serious nose hits as well. But it was all so good. We just noshed and visited and visited and noshed for a long time. Although we made a pretty healthy dent in the sushi, we didn't finish it all. Dave and Marge sent us home with some leftovers. YUM!

So, it looks like we'll be trying to track down some nori, some wasabi, and some sticky rice while we're still in La Paz. Shouldn't be too tough as there are a lot of sushi restaurants hereabouts. Can't wait to catch some fish and try this on our own. I believe that Kievit's summer plans are similar to ours so we should be having some good sushi get-togethers this summer up in the Sea. David and Carolyn should be up there as well so maybe we'll all just bring our delicacies to their made-for-entertaining cockpit.

And now we know Dave and Marge a lot better than we used to. So go the cruising community connections.