Inarizushi is part of a larger Japanese character based meal titled "Kyaraben on Steroids" featured in August's Foodbuzz's 24-24-24. Click here to see the entire meal.
Inarizushi is popular picnic food in Japan. It's easy to carry, tasty, and healthy.
Ingredients:
Sushi rice
Inarizushi tofu skins
You can typically find inarizushi wrappers in Asian grocery stores. Here is a picture of the brand that I used.
Once you open the can, the tofu skins will look like flat squarish sheets. Gently take one out and carefully pry it open. It's sort of like a pita pocket.
Fill with sushi rice and optionally sprinkle some sesame seeds on top.
To make the Totoro shaped sushi, fill with a little less rice than normal and fold down the upper portion. Make 2 small V-shaped cuts as ears. Cut black seaweed into small flat triangles for the belly and also cut out a small diamond for the nose. For his eye you can cut out kamaboko (Japanese fish cake) with a straw (similar to the Totoro rice in this post). Finally, use sesame seeds for eye balls. I find that it's easier to handle these small pieces of seaweed and sesame seeds with some tweezers!
For the sac, fill a tofu-skin halfway full of rice and then tie the top with a bit of scallion. The umbrella is just a small bit of cucumber with a toothpick.
Serve!
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