Chocolate Sushi (will win you friends and influence people)

Re-posted because my favorite foodie site published this today!! (And because I wanted to feel all kinds of fabulous today.)




I am so freaking clever, can I just say that?

Yes, I can.

When I heard about this place, I knew that I had found god. The thing is, I don't think god is always a good place for me to visit -I tend to the obsessive side, and becoming chummy could only lead to one thing: becoming too chummy.

Once I knew where the house of god was, I could be at serious risk of becoming a god-stalker. Better not to go there.

So, even though I was near this crazy chocolate-works-of-art shop the other day, I did not drag my children along to visit god's temple of chocolate. Because truthfully, I would be a bitch-mama to take my sugar-obsessed girl and my chocolate-worshipping toddler into a store where individual pieces of chocolate are $10 to $15. ("NO! NO!" "NOnono!" "NO! NO! NO!")

So, I didn't.

But that didn't stop my obsession with chocolate sushi. And the possibilities. Oh no, not in the least. I wanted to see what other amateurs like myself were pulling off.

And then I decided to devote an entire afternoon to it attempt it in my very own humble kitchen. (Did I mention it was about 95 degrees today?)

Chocolate was the goal, so the 'nori' wrapper had to be chocolate - not electric green 'fruit' leather. I decided to go with a chocolate modeling 'clay' (reminiscent of my preschool teaching days), which is really just whatever quality chocolate you choose, melted and mixed with corn syrup.

MODELING CHOCOLATE:
one 12oz bag semisweet choc chips

1/3 cup+2T corn syrup

melt chocolate over double boiler, let cool a bit and stir in corn syrup. wrap tightly and refrigerate to desired consistency. knead and roll into desired shapes.

I didn't like the marshmallow fluff mixed with coconut idea as much as I liked the rice crispy treat filling. I also thought that the chocolate would be easier to roll around something more firm. I made a basic recipe and omitted one cup of cereal so that it might be more willing to give in to my rolling pin with more marshmallow goodness binding it all together.

I then took handfuls globs of that and rolled it out (between waxed paper) to about 1/4 inch thickness. Or maybe it was more like 1/2 inch. I am not good with estimates.

I had just gone strawberry picking (I made jam; yes I did - suck on that martha) and decided that strawberries would be a good filling in place of hamachi. And it would probably taste better too - with the chocolate and all. Dried apricots or mango would look super too, but I only had fresh strawberries, so I was going with the full-on raw tuna look.

So, I divided my big wad of chocolate dough in half, rolled one piece out between wax paper (the kitchen was out of parchment), continually peeling it off one side and dropping it onto the other side, until it was very thin, but thick enough to handle. I found that if it gets too thin, it will spread (instead of roll) over the crispy treats and perhaps (ack!) break.

I measured an actual pack of square nori sheets over the chocolate and cut a nice square line doing the same with the rolled out crispy treats, making sure that the chocolate 'nori' was longer than the 'rice' on the sealing end of the roll. Then I laid the thin slices of strawberries, some snipped up blueberry filled marshmallows, and some slivers of garden mint down the center closer to the rolling end, and, using a fresh piece of the wax paper to help, rolled it up very tight.

After refrigerating to firm them up, I cut them into approximately 1/2 inch slices. I resisted many poop jokes in front of my daughter. The rolls cut easily with our sharpest knife - but would they really end up looking anything like sushi?

After arranging them on the platter to bring to the neighbors potluck (where they would impress the fuck out of everyone until the posse of young unwatched children happened to descend upon them like a swarm of teenaged hyenas and annihilate them in 30 seconds) (I am not judging. But if my kid was like, 7 or 8 years old and went all berzerk at the dessert table and loaded up on 5 brownies and 6 cookies and 7 chocolate sushis, well I would get a little whoop-ass on her. She should know about that shit whether I am there to police her or not. Oh wait, she does. And she's not even 6 yet. I'm just sayin.), I decided at the last minute to add two details for authenticity's sake. Because I was still just a
little bit worried that perhaps nobody would understand that I was going for a mock sushi. I colored some sugar orange and sprinkled it on some of the rolls, to (hopefully) resemble tobiko, or, fish eggs. Mmm, delicious...fish eggs-n-chocolate!
And, I decided that a 'dipping sauce' would be nice, so I thinned out some dark chocolate sauce (who knew that dove choc sauce lasts at least 7 months longer than your ice cream?!) and poured it into a little sauce bowl. Later (after I was done taking pictures, of course), I tossed some sesame seeds on top of the chocolate sauce. This appeared to really throw people for a loop. They wanted to dip it in the chocolate sauce - they knew it was really chocolate sauce, but it looked like soy sauce. And, just having gotten over the 'is it rawfreakingfish or is it strawberry' thing, it was a huge leap of faith to dip your chocolate sushi roll in that sauce. It was fun to watch, though.

Does it look authentic? It tasted awesome.