How was everyone’s New Year Celebration? Mine was pretty quiet – I spent New Year’s Eve with my family eating lots and lots of food like we do everywhere (I’m not much of a party girl… I prefer to stay home… and eat! 🙂 ) We stayed up late eating (spinach dip, shrimp, stuffed mushrooms, bacon wrapped asparagus – my mom made all this from scratch! My amazing mom 🙂 ) and drinking Martinelli’s sparkling cider.

Unfortunately, I had to get up early the next day to make sushi for our New Year’s celebration before we headed to my uncle’s house. You might remember me writing about this earlier, but if not, here’s a quick recap: Every year it is a tradition for us as a somewhat Japanese family to eat sushi on New Year’s. Typically, we buy all of our sushi, but this year, since the creation of SushiDay, it was a little different. We still bought California Rolls, Inari-Zushi and Futomaki (a vegetarian roll), but my family also requested that I make a few rolls.

I ended up making 9 of the Crunchy Shrimp Rolls (about 72 pieces) and 5 of the Kappa Maki Rolls (about 40 pieces). The Crunchy Shrimp Rolls were a HUGE hit with my extended family – they ate as much as they possibly could and then took the rest home for the next day’s lunch! I was very happy about that. 😀

This roll is amazingly delicious! I love tempura shrimp, avocado, and unagi, and together they taste so good! In addition, the roll ends up looking very nice, so it seems even more mouth watering. 🙂 I’m really not sure how the roll got its name, and I have never before heard of the roll, but according to the Sushi Chart, this is another of the popular rolls (that nobody really knows about 😉 )!

Makes 6 rolls, or 36-48 slices.

Ingredients

• 6 sheets nori
• 3 cups sumeshi
• 12 pieces tempura shrimp
• 2 avocados
• 1 small cucumber
• 1 piece frozen unagi

Cooking Directions

1. Cook sushi rice.
2. Bake tempura shrimp as directed on the package. (I haven’t had time to make homemade tempura shrimp so I can get you a good recipe for that… don’t worry, it will come as soon as I can try it!) You can also fry the tempura shrimp if you choose, but baking it is healthier, and you can prepare other things (such as the sumeshi) while it’s baking.
3. Cut tails off the tempura shrimp.
4. Cook the unagi as directed on the package.
5. Cut the unagi into 1-1.5 inch wide by 2.5 inch long slices.
6. Cut the avocados in half, discarding the pit.
7. Cut off the hard skin and discard.
8. Slice the first avocado into thin sticks.
9. Slice the second avocado into thin slices, although not so thin that they easily tear if you try to pick them up.
10. Cut the cucumber into thin strips.
11. Roll the sushi inside-out, using several avocado sticks, 2 pieces of tempura shrimp and a stick of cucumber as your fillings.
12. Lay alternating pieces of unagi and avocado on top of the inside-out roll.
13. Use your plastic wrap-covered rolling mat to squeeze the unagi and avocado into the roll so they won’t fall off.
14. Carefully cut the roll, trying to keep the toppings from falling off the sushi.
15. Serve with shoyu, wasabi, and ginger if desired. Enjoy!