Sushi, Ninecooks' style

Sushi

Last week my husband Ted and I watched the oh-so-campy Ghostbusters for the gazillionth time. Remember the scene near the end, where the four ghostbusters are standing on the roof of Sigourney Weaver's apartment building, blasting their backpack-mounted phaser guns to no effect at the evil Gozor? Harold Ramis' character comes up with the idea to "cross the streams" (and defeat the villain, and destroy the Stay-Puf Marshmallow Man...which sounds completely ridiculous if you haven't seen the film).

When the four phaser streams intertwine, they prove powerful enough to change the energy flow around them.

And, strangely, as I watched the movie, this made me think of Ninecooks' four cooking groups, each one a stream, powerful on its own, but more powerful when intertwined into a whole Ninecooks community. That's our mission, building community one group at a time, one family at a time, one menu at a time.

And then, I thought of sushi.

(And right about now, you're thinking, "She's nuts!")

I'm not really nuts, but I am really excited about the idea of using some variation of the same menu for all four groups, tweaking a bit here and there to fit the personality, timing, and tastebuds of each. Crossing the streams, weaving the same ideas among the groups, taking from one and sharing with another.

For the new World Cuisines Cooking Group, which meets for the first time at the end of this month, I've been working on a bento box menu. We'll start with sushi rice made in the rice cooker, and we'll create a variety of vegetable nori-maki for one of the components of our bento box. We'll fill the bento's other compartments with teriyaki chicken or salmon, dumplings, salad, and steamed rice (I have some Nishiki brown rice I've been wanting to try).

The Family Cooking Group meets the first week in June. At first, I planned to explore the idea of hand pies – empanadas, arepas, Cornish pasties, calzones. But then I thought that, in the warm weather (and hot kitchen), it might be nice to do....sushi! Not the squishy-fishy kind, but some maki rolls with less conventional fillings like tomatoes and mozzarella, or bacon and eggs, or something with chocolate. Sushi American Style, by Tracy Griffith, has great ideas for my family-friendly version of the sushi menu.

The following week, the Wednesday Lunch Group takes over the Ninecooks kitchen. They've already expressed a desire not to cook too much in June (memories of last year's hot Spring cooking sessions dancing in their heads, I guess). Though we talked about a menu that riffed on strawberries, I think I'll propose....sushi! A platter of maki rolls and inside-out rolls coated with sesame seeds sounds like the perfect lunch, doesn't it? And maybe we'll figure out how to get those strawberries on the menu, too.

The #1 Cooking Group meets in late June, closing out Ninecooks' Spring season. By the time we get together to cook, it'll be way too hot to cook. The #1 folks are adventurous and accomplished in the culinary arena, so perhaps we'll explore even more unconventional sushi, using herbs and vegetables from our gardens. In addition to rolls, we can try oshi-zushi (pressed sushi) and fukusa-zushi, omelet parcels filled with rice.

Four groups, four different approaches. How do you say bon appetit in Japanese?

(Photo from Easy Sushi by Emi Kazuko, Ryland Peters & Small, 2000.)