Inarizushi

Inarizushi is part of a larger Japanese character based meal titled "Kyaraben on Steroids" featured in August's Foodbuzz's 24-24-24. Click here to see the entire meal.

Inarizushi is popular picnic food in Japan. It's easy to carry, tasty, and healthy.

Ingredients:
Sushi rice
Inarizushi tofu skins

You can typically find inarizushi wrappers in Asian grocery stores. Here is a picture of the brand that I used.

Once you open the can, the tofu skins will look like flat squarish sheets. Gently take one out and carefully pry it open. It's sort of like a pita pocket.

Fill with sushi rice and optionally sprinkle some sesame seeds on top.

To make the Totoro shaped sushi, fill with a little less rice than normal and fold down the upper portion. Make 2 small V-shaped cuts as ears. Cut black seaweed into small flat triangles for the belly and also cut out a small diamond for the nose. For his eye you can cut out kamaboko (Japanese fish cake) with a straw (similar to the Totoro rice in this post). Finally, use sesame seeds for eye balls. I find that it's easier to handle these small pieces of seaweed and sesame seeds with some tweezers!

For the sac, fill a tofu-skin halfway full of rice and then tie the top with a bit of scallion. The umbrella is just a small bit of cucumber with a toothpick.

Serve!