Eating cheap in Tokyo: Veggie nori rolls

Posted on 29 January 2009
Tags: Recipes

As promised, I’m going to show off Karen Knowler’s luscious nori (seaweed) roll recipe today.

What I like about it is it’s got a Japanese touch and it’s a cheap, fast, delicious lunch. I’ve made this twice already and I can’t wait to have it again.

This is the breakdown for two large nori rolls and they lasted me over five hours before the hunger pangs kicked in. It’s seriously a myth that your stomach will feel empty after salads — you’ve got to put together the right mix, so the avocado is what fuels the slow burn in this recipe.

Ingredients:

½ avocado 125JPY
¼ white onion 10JPY
8 olives 40JPY
2 stalks watercress 40JPY
1 small tomato 75JPY
2 sheets of nori 60JPY

Total cost: 310JPY

The cost is a rough estimation as it is calculated according to fractions of a whole packet of veggie or bottle. What’s great about these ingredients is that they keep quite well in the fridge so you can whip up another similar dish or use them for something else within the week you bought them.

But the most important thing is, it was sensational. Oh my goodness, I never knew raw white onions tasted so awesome! The pungent fragrance mixed with a bit of sharpness is just perfect with creamy avocado and crunchy watercress.

Just a couple of tips:

*Leave an inch of border on the seaweed when you pile on your ingredients.

*Put in the leafy greens first and then the moist ones last to keep the nori from falling apart. I know Karen Knowler’s video advises the opposite so the nori can roll properly and stick together as a tube but somehow my experience was the total opposite — mine fell apart, and I had to eat the different ingredients almost separately, but the key to this scrumptious meal is to have almost every ingredient in one bite. I think it’s because I used toasted nori sheets so maybe they are less hardy than raw ones.

*The olives are quite essential to this recipe — I left them out in my very first roll which was tasty but lacked a little saltiness, so my second roll was just divine with these juicy flavours exploding in my mouth.

I am probably in the honeymoon phase, but raw is really not that hard. My first impression was that it was for people who had a lot of time on their hands — yes and no. I think if you are making very complicated recipes like raw pizza and raw burgers, you need a chunk of time to put everything together but the beauty of Karen Knowler’s recipes are they’re for the woman on the go. I mean, you really don’t actually cook.

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