Daring Sushi

This is my first attempt at tackling another of the monthly daring challenges; this time we talk about Daring Cooks and Sushi!As with the Daring Bakers, the Daring Cooks virtually meet once a month to share their results on a chosen dish to realize following a specific recipe. This month it was the turn of sushi.
It was not the first time for me, since I already had a go at it when I was in Florence 5-6 years ago. As with Macarons, this recipe is a lot about skills and technique.
It is always said, at good reason, that the heart of a good piece of sushi is the rice. The short grained Japanese rice has to be slightly sticky so to keep its shape but loose enough to crumble once in your mouth. The rice itself doesn’t leak much starch when cooked, even because it is carefully rinsed beforehand; so to supplement it with taste and stickiness, a syrup made with water, rice vinegar, sugar and salt, is added to the rice during the cooling process. The rice keeps its loose identity, each grain recognizable and not smashed into a pulp but still quite sticky to give you trouble in laying it out on the sheet of nori seaweed (to avoid this you keep on wetting your hands when you handle the rice).