A Note from Teri

Believe it or not, I have been working on this recipe for two years, and I still don’t consider it perfect. I can be pretty tenacious! My first rendition of this idea emerged when inspiration struck at a boutique grocery store in LA called Erewhon. I was visiting September in LA and enjoyed Erewhon’s amazing sushi sandwich. After the trip, I started seeing it on social media, and I came up with my first version back in March of 2023. Yes, that’s how long I’ve been working on it! Erewhon uses crispy rice as a “bread” for the sandwich, but after trying it that way, I realized I prefer an open-faced sandwich moment.

Coming up with a version as amazing as theirs has not been easy, but it sure has been a delicious experiment. I've hesitated to share the recipe, because I know it is inevitable that someone's rice “bread” might fall apart, but in truth, isn’t life actually all about your rice bread falling apart, maybe even repeatedly? Just like embracing the imperfection inherent in life itself, this particular journey has shown me that a recipe doesn’t have to reach the pinnacle of perfection before I can share it publicly. So while this is a recipe for sushi, it’s also a recipe for life, and a lesson for all of us. We don’t have to figure everything out. It’s ok to just enjoy being in the middle of something and continue to figure it out from there.

With that in mind, September and Mo came to visit around Easter, and although I had practically given up on the sushi sandwich idea, they were excited to help get this recipe ready for sharing. “Fall down seven times, stand up eight,” is a quote that reminds me of September. As a child, September was an incredibly tenacious being. (I have no idea where September got that quality.) What a perfect cooking partner for this quandary of a recipe! It was lovely to share this sushi experience together and to see the unique ways in which everyone chose to customize theirs. Lily made a bowl version without even using the crispy rice, preferring the leftover soft rice that hadn’t been fried. It was totally an interactive dinner party, full of such good energy. We pushed the “work” aspect aside and just made sushi sandwiches for fun. What a beautiful experience to share the kitchen and cook together. It was so much fun for everyone to have a special little job, and the kitchen was just humming along wonderfully. And as it turned out, September and Mo both said it was the best sushi with crispy rice they’d ever had.

The @nocrumbsleft kitchen tried these again after September and Mo left, and our rice continued to fall apart! What we realized was if we increased the amount of rice in the recipe, it made it much less fragile and worked better. Also - unequivocally use sushi rice. For the ultimate success, I suggest simply making a crispy rice bowl, or just serve your sushi over rice, rather than trying to make perfectly unbreakable, yet perfectly crispy, squares. If you love spending time in the kitchen, it is a delightful experiment to try, so I would encourage you to give it a shot.

When we have perfected a recipe, meaning we feel like we’ve totally got it down, we send it to our friend Lisa to test. She comes up with her own amazing tips and tricks. Another helpful tip is to measure out the rice squares and make the indents while it’s in the baking tray - for me, it’s easier to use a ruler - and cutting it 90% of the way through, before freezing it for two hours. To make the rice indents, I used a rubber spatula so as not to cut all the way though the rice with something like a sharp knife. In this case, Lisa used parchment paper on top of the rice to make the indent. With that method, when you cut the rice the rest of the 10% of the way through, right before frying it, the rice will be less likely to break apart while frying.

When you make this as a group activity, it’s so fun to choose from a variety of raw fish, make special sauces for each fish, and watch how each person makes theirs. We each did our own unique spin, and our finished products look magical together. My friend Valentine has a great, very simple version with mango and diced avocado with lemon juice combined in a jar and stored in the fridge overnight. She uses sushi grade tuna with sesame seeds, sesame oil, and yuzu ponzu.

Again, nothing about this recipe is perfect, so embrace the imperfection of life and consider this more of a “recipe” for a fun sushi party. Involve your family and guests and encourage everyone to add more sesame oil or yuzu sauce or hot sauce or whatever their heart desires. In fact, most of my recipes lend themselves to that kind of customization, and the truth is, on our sushi sandwich adventure we discovered that broken rice tastes every bit as delicious as unbroken rice.

We have new recipes on my blog every single week, so click HERE to check them out! We have many recipes that would be wonderful for Memorial Day: a Lobster Cobb, this holiday round up, and we also posted all about my Dream Outdoor Kitchen.

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