Couple of weeks ago i came up with an idea of making some kind of japanese foods.
Not because i'm so damn good at cooking (in which, i'm not good at all.. for sure), but only because i am so excited about EATING (in caps word, i mind you, hehe) all type of Japs foods. 'All' here means raw foods are included...
Therefore, on that Saturday, the menu of the day was "Hanny's udon and sushi"

The hunting of the ingredients started with my friends bought some frozen udon and packs of nori.
For those who doesn't have any idea of what nori and udon is, here's the explanation.
Nori is a kind of roasted seaweed. It is used to wrap sushi rice and make it 'a real sushi'. For some people, it could be disgusting because of its smell. Just like my siblings, they hate nori so much so they squeezed the sushi dough out of nori, and ate it without eating the nori itself. Hehehe, it looked funny though..
While nori is a kind of thing that not everyone will enjoy, udon is the contrary.
I bet most of people will love it as it looks like 'big white noodle'. It is chewy and sometimes tastes juicy (only if the quality of udon is good).

After ordering one pack of nori and udon, i also bought bamboo mat and rice vinegar to make it a real sushi
Not to mention, searching for the recipe of sushi and udon, while bothering our Shima Restaurant GM, Mr. Shigeru.

Then the cooking process was begun..

I first made the sushi rice. Since japanese rice was so expensive (more than one hundred thousand rupiahs for 5 kgs of rice, which i only need 2 cups of it), i decided NOT to use that rice.
This was the start of 'cooking disaster'.
I mixed 4 cups of local rice and 1 cup of sticky rice to make a 'fake japanese rice'. Eventhough i tried to cook it on a regular style like using japanese rice, it looked more like porridge than sushi rice.
Not feeling down, i then made the sushi vinegar. By mixing 1 tsp of sugar, a pitch of salt, and some rice vinegar, i then splashed that vinegar all over those fake rice.

And it seemed work out.. The rice were shiny and tasted like sushi, hehehe.
But it didn't take long until i tried to stuff it with those fried prawn and omelet, and wrapped it with nori.

The sushi dough was still too soft and not firm enough so when i pressed the mat, it spoiled all over the mat. When i tried to do that again for the 3rd times, it seemed getting better.. The sushi looked firm, and it tasted okay for me.

Sushi was done with kinda good result..

My sushi project :)

Next, udon..

Making udon is not as difficult as sushi. All i had to do was boiling the frozen udon and put it in a bowl together with all the condiments (shredded nori, japanese tofu, fried prawn, etc), before pouring the soup on it.
The soup itself was made of chicken and beef stock..

Looks great, isn't it?

Finally, all my cookings were finished and on a "not too bad" taste which i'm sure will make it again in the next day..
Anyone interested to join?