Confessions of a Reluctant Recessionista

As per the instructions I had found on the Internet, I boiled up the shari rice, drained it and let it cool before grabbing a handful to shape into ‘a long oval form’. The bottom was supposed to be flat, the top and sides more rounded in order to get the salmon to stay on top. Never mind flat on the bottom and rounded on the top, I couldn’t get the rice to stick together at all. Bugger it. I ditched the first batch, had some more sake and started over.
    The second batch worked a little better, and I did manage to form some respectable-looking rice bases. I had planned on doing fourteen, but it was laborious (and frankly, very boring) work, so I gave up after seven. Not everyone likes salmon anyway, do they? Next, I had to slice the fish into neat little rectangles. Or jagged, misshapen lumps, take your pick. These were to be glued to the rice with the help of a pea-sized serving of wasabi. I don’t know if my wasabi was too watery or my pieces of fish too ungainly, butthe salmon refused point blank to stay on top of the rice.
    Damn. Nigiri is a deceptively simple-looking dish. I decided to move onto dragon rolls. I finished off the remains of the sake and got to work. It all started out rather well. I fried up my shrimp in the tempura mixture and they came out golden brown and delicious, exactly as they were supposed to be. I sliced the cucumber and peeled the avocado and got ready to do the assembly.
    ‘ Spread the rice on the nori sheet and flip it over the mat so that the rice is now facing upwards ,’ the instructions said. Huh?
    ‘ Lay the avocado and cucumber sticks you have precutted [sic] and line up some tempura shrimps and on top of that slice of eel .’ Eel? Since when was there eel? Nobody had even mentioned eel until now. I laid out the avocado, cucumber and shrimp in a line.
    ‘ Roll it inside-out style ,’ the instructions said. Um, OK. I rolled up the nori sheet as best I could. Bits fell out from either end.
    ‘ Elegantly, cover the top of the roll with the layers of avocado .’ What sodding layers of avocado? I’d used up the avocado. And there was nothing elegant going on here. The roll wouldn’t stay rolled up, the stuffing (I’m sure that’s not what you’re supposed to call it) kept falling out … it was a total bloody disaster.
    This just couldn’t happen. Here I was, trying to show how together I was, trying to prove to Jude that I could cope, trying to prove to Kate and Sophie thatmy life was going swimmingly, trying to prove to Ali that I wasn’t a total basket case, and now look at me. It was quarter to six, the guests were due here in just over two hours, the kitchen was a mess of soggy rice and greyish green wasabi paste, topped off with random bits of fish, and I hadn’t even started tidying up the living room. There was nothing for it. I dialled Tsunami, the very expensive sushi restaurant around the corner.
    ‘You have to help me!’ I wailed at the man who answered the phone. ‘I need twelve California rolls, twelve vegetarian California rolls, twelve salmon nigiri, twelve prawn nigiri, six salmon and six tuna sashimi and I need them now. I mean, within two hours. I could come and collect?’
    ‘We don’t usually do takeaways, miss,’ the man said. ‘We do cater parties, but we would need some notice for that.’
    ‘What if I paid extra?’ I asked, scarcely believing the words were coming out of my mouth even as I said them.
    There was a long pause.
    ‘There are twelve people at your party, I take it?’
    ‘That’s right.’
    ‘We can put together a mixed platter for twelve. It will cost one hundred and sixty pounds.’
    ‘Done.’ I gave him my credit card details, trying as hard as I could not to think about how self-defeating all this was. I wished I had some sake left.
    I tore through the flat, scooping the assorted sushimess into a bin bag and taking it to the bins outside (you never know, someone might notice it in the bin in the kitchen). I speed-tidied the living room, grabbing armfuls of trainers, laptops, iPods, magazines and other assorted junk and dumping them on Jude’s bed. Realising that I smelt strongly of fish and ginger, I hopped into the shower and was just in the middle of washing my hair when the doorbell rang. Crap.
    Wrapped in a tiny towel (where have all my enormous White Company bath sheets gone?), I buzzed up the delivery men from Tsunami. There were three of them, all bearing platters covered in the most