ROLL YOUR OWN

Sushi restaurants offer ambience and the pleasure of being served, but when a budget is tight or a cook is adventurous, homemade sushi offers a world of possibilities. \nGraduate student Anne-Marie Dunbar lived in Hiroshima, Japan for a year, where she learned to make her own sushi. With our step-by-step instructions, you can too. Check it out.\n"This is for a futomaki roll," Dunbar said. "Maki is hand or hand-rolled, and futo is stick, so it's quite literal."\nMost of the ingredients can be purchased in Asian grocery stores, although Dunbar noted that several of the larger chain grocery stores carried the necessary items.\nFirst, cook a batch of good sticky rice (generally marked as Japanese or Korean rice). Use less water than the box calls for, and cook about 3 cups. In a separate sauce pan, mix a half a cup of rice vinegar, four tablespoons of sugar and one tablespoon of salt. Heat the mixture until all the sugar and salt are dissolved. \nSpread the rice on a large cookie sheet and pour the rice mixture over. Let the rice mixture cool thoroughly. Lay out pre-cut seaweed sheets and cover them with a thin layer of rice. Leave one end (about a quarter of an inch) free to wrap. \nFillers can be any combination of seafood and vegetables, but Dunbar recommends cucumber, avocado, crab and carrots. For additional flavor, marinate the carrots in soy mirin sauce (rice wine). Another tasty filler, Dunbar said, is kanpyo, a bean gourd in sweet soy sauce, although this is sometimes difficult to find. More adventurous sushi-makers can try to mix and match fillers until they find something that's just right.\nLay your choice of fillers lengthwise on the seaweed-and-rice bed, and roll it up. From there, cut it into inch-long pieces. \n"Traditionally you cut the roll in half and each half in half again, and each in half again, so that you have eight pieces, but it doesn't affect the taste, really," Dunbar said.\nServe your homemade sushi with wasabi, pickled ginger and soy sauce.