Kimbap

Before you start

• a bamboo mat helps, though a tea towel will do

Ingredients

Serves 2 · dimmer marks are storecupboard

• 180gshort-grain rice
• 4nori sheets
• 2eggs
• 1 tintinned tuna — drained properly, or the roll goes soggy
• 1 tbspmayonnaise
• 1carrot
• 150gspinach
• 60gpickled radish — danmuji — the yellow strips, and the roll is flat without them
• 1cucumber
• 1 tbspsesame oil
• 1 tbspsesame seeds
• to tastesalt

Method

6 steps

1. boil · 20m walk away

   Rice rinsed and cooked, then turned out into a wide bowl and dressed with sesame oil, salt and half the sesame seeds while it is hot. No vinegar and no sugar — that is a different dish.

2. rest · 10m walk away

   Left to come down to just-warm under a cloth. Hot rice steams the nori limp before you have finished rolling.

3. chop · 15m

   Carrot into fine matchsticks and fried a minute in oil with salt, spinach wilted and squeezed bone dry, cucumber cut into long batons with the wet seed core cut away, radish drained on paper, tuna mixed with the mayonnaise.

4. fry · 6m

   Eggs beaten with a pinch of salt and cooked flat and thick in a small pan, then cut into long strips.

5. fold · 14m

   Nori shiny side down, rice spread over two thirds of it in a thin even layer with a wet hand, fillings laid across in a single line near the bottom, and rolled forward tightly with the mat, pulling back against the roll as you go. One line of each filling and no more.

6. finish · 4m

   Outside brushed with sesame oil, sesame over, then cut with a sharp blade wiped clean between every single cut — a sticky knife drags the roll apart rather than through it.