Apr 24 - Ballito Umhlanga

Step-by-step
sushi
Text: Jennifer Campbell Photographs: Jessmica Depalal & tayla jade photography
Precision, patience and an
appreciation of quality ingredients
and fine flavours – making sushi is
a true art. We spent a fun afternoon
learning to craft our own sushi at
Sunsets and Mermaids in Umhlanga.
36 Get It • Ballito•Umdloti•Umhlanga April 2024
Set amid the buzz of Umhlanga Village, Sunsets and
Mermaids is one of those places that’s designed for a
good time. With its eclectic décor, fun cocktails, tasty
food and friendly staff, it’s a great spot for after-work
drinks or an evening meal. We were invited to attend a sushimaking
workshop with the restaurant’s sushi chefs, Nandi
Mngenge and Londi Ndlela, who taught us four different rolling
styles and shared their expert tips and tricks along the way.
With aprons on and ready with rolling mats, knives and all the
ingredients we needed, we started the workshop off by making
our own salmon roses. This popular style of sushi is made with
thinly sliced tuna, which is wrapped around a ball of rice and
topped with some Kewpie mayo, avocado and caviar. Londi and
Nandi showed us how to slice the salmon as thinly as possible –
a skill that definitely takes some practice – before rolling the rice
into a perfectly-shaped cylinder and wrapping it up in the fish.
Next up was the prawn maki. ‘Maki’ refers to rolled sushi rice,
which is rolled in ‘nori’, a dry sheet of seaweed. To create our
own maki, we pressed rice onto the seaweed, loaded it with
cooked and peeled prawns, and rolled it up with the help of
our bamboo mats. Our expert chefs explained the importance
of keeping our hands damp to avoid unwanted stickiness, and
showed us how much of each ingredient would be just right.
By this stage, we were getting the hang of our new skills, and
were ready to make tuna nigiri. Nigiri is characterised by a
small ball of rice, which is topped with raw fish. It’s a simple,
bite-size dish that is elevated by using super-fresh fish. The
team at Sunsets and Mermaids sources seafood locally every
day, and never uses fish that has been frozen – our tuna, which
had been caught that morning, had a deep, red colour and a
rich, meaty flavour.
Last on our sushi-making line-up was the California roll. This dish
is slightly more complex to roll, and is essentially an inverted maki