Recipe of the Week: Sushi in a Bowl

Sometimes, life needs short cuts. There's nothing wrong with that. Take this dish for example. Sure, you could take the same ingredients and roll and slice and mold them into sushi perfection for an hour. Or you could toss them in a bowl, watch some trashy reality TV (Real Housewives, anyone?) and call it a night. We all need that sometimes.

This recipe basically takes your favorite sushi roll, and mixes it up, Tokyo Bowl-style. If you've never made sushi before, this is a good jumping off point to get comfortable with the flavors. The following are my favorite ingredients (I'm partial to dragon rolls), but you can use any of your favorite sushi ingredients or combinations, such as snow crab, shrimp, salmon, tuna, celery, roe, cucumber and asparagus. Not sure what you want? in Foster City is a wealth of Asian flavors. Wander the aisles and grab what looks good to you. Who knows? You may discover some new favorite foods.

Make dinner a fun family activity by mixing together the rice, then setting out a variety of ingredients and letting kids create their own version. All you really have to do is mix the rice with the mirin and sugar to get that tangy, sweet sushi rice flavor, and then you can take it from there.

Serves two

Ingredients

• 2 cups cooked white or sushi rice
• 2 T mirin
• 1 T sugar
• 2 eggs
• Unagi (eel)
• 1 avocado
• Sliced green onions
• Soy sauce
• Eel sauce

Instructions

1. Mix together mirin and sugar, and heat in microwave on high for 30 seconds (or until sugar is dissolved.) Fold gently into rice.
2. Broil or heat unagi according to package instructions.
3. Scramble eggs the way you normally would, except don't add any milk, salt, pepper, etc.
4. Divide rice into two bowls. Fold in unagi, avocado and eggs. Garnish with green onions and eel sauce. Serve with soy sauce.