success and wobbles

Hello Beautiful People!

Yesterday I celebrated the success of my Kickstarter campaign at a friend's birthday party, where the theme was Jell-o™. I love a good creative challenge, as you've probably already figured out, so I put my thinking cap on and came up with Jell-o™ Sushi as my contribution.

I didn't take photos of the process, but it's very easy to make. Here's how I did it, using images of the real sushi and other things that inspired this art project:

I found this recipe for white Jell-o™, part of a red white and blue "salad." (Okay, full disclosure here, I actually used Knox™ Gelatine, not Jell-o™ for this, but I got caught up in the common nomenclature and party theme. Rah rah for Knox™ for holding true on producing clear gelatine all these years!!!! Henceforth, I will use the true brand-name to protect the integrity of this tasty delicacy from animal byproducts!!)

I used a glass baking dish that would allow me to pour the white Jell-o™ (Knox™) concoction in a thickness of one inch. It took about three hours for this to set, a little longer than your traditional Knox™ or Jell-o™ because, I believe, it contains cream cheese and half-and-half to make it white.

I cut the gelled white Knox™ into small rectangles, about the size of sushi rice. Using a little spatula, I moved a piece onto a cutting board. For the nori, I decided to use fruit leather made from purple grapes, because it was the only thing I could think of that looked like nori. I found the perfect product for this--Fruitabü grape rolls. If you can't buy this locally, just cut a strip about one inch wide and 6 inches long, or enough to wrap around the belly of the white Knox™/"sushi rice" twice for nigiri-style sushi. I say 'twice' because there needs to be room for......

Figuring out what to put on top was another challenge. I used multi-colored Swedish Fish for the pieces around the perimeter of my arrangement to playfully honor the various types of fish found on tradition nigiri-style sushi. I wanted at least two different sushi styles to emulate for presentation's sake, so I looked to my favorite iconic salmon roe ikura for inspiration. I found this jell-roe I spied online, (I betcha anything they used Knox™!) but didn't have the time to engineer the mold to make those tiny round things work! Luckily,

I found some perfectly round cinnamon candies, similar to Red-Hots and filled the top to make three gunkan-maki styled pieces for the center of the platter. I cut the corners off of my previously used rectangles and formed the fruit leather nori around it to make it more oval.

Move the finished sushi to your serving platter with the spatula to keep it formed as best you can. Mine doesn't look perfect, and, honestly, I wish it were a little thicker, but it made me happy, made the birthday girl happy, and it was mostly consumed before the 95+ degree heat took its toll.

Oh sun, you cruel mistress. Don't you know I'm an 80 degree gal?

If you have an Asian grocery where you live, you should be able to find sushi grass for sale to garnish. If anyone tries this themselves and adds some new ideas, please send photos!!