Maxim, Oct 1999
By Mike Dojc

Could the power to turn raw, dead meat into a gourmet treat actually lie in your clumsy hands? Quite possibly. Phillip Yi, vice president of the celebrated California Sushi Academy in Venice, California, demonstrates how you, too, can make the tasty delight that's been a staple of Japanese cuisine for untold centuries: the California roll.

Step 1: Hunt & gather

Pick up the following essentials at a gourmet or specialty food store: a makisu (a rollable woven bamboo mat), short-grain rice, grated wasabi (a fiery-hot green horseradish), pickled ginger, soy sauce, and nori, a.k.a. sheets of seaweed. For the filling you'll need some julienned veggies and either crabmeat or kanikama, a vegetarian substitute that's engineered to taste like crab and seal cracks in weatherstripping. Getting yourself a nice silk robe may not help, but it certainly wouldn't hurt, either.

Step 2: Line the roll

Cook half a cup of rice with salt and vinegar, and put out a bowl of water. "Wet your hands before you touch rice,"says Yi. "Otherwise your hands will turn white." Heavens! It'll also keep the rice from sticking to you. Place a sheet of seaweed on the mat, then blanket it with about a half-inch of rice, leaving a 11/2-inch strip of uncovered seaweed running parallel to the grain of the mat. Place a sheet of cellophane over the rice and flip the whole thing over so the rice is on the bottom. Remove the mat and set it aside.

Step 3: Fill 'er up

Cover the seaweed with another layer of rice, leaving a half-inch uncovered. Make a furrow in the rice along the opposite edge in which to put the crabmeat, avocado, and cucumber. Moisten the exposed flap of the seaweed. Now use the mat to roll the seaweed into a cylinder until you've overlapped the moistened edge. Then light up the fat end of the roll and…no, wait…Wet a sharp knife and cut the roll into inch-wide wheels (practice on Ho Ho's). Chill in the fridge for an hour; serve with wasabi, soy sauce, ginger, and geisha girls.