Last post, I talked about the kinds of puddings you can make by mashing up your B choice cereals and leaving them to soak in yoghurt. That’s easy and always nice, and you can use Weetabix, Weetabix minis, apricot shreddies, oats and muesli that way. But you can’t do it successfully with dried apricots or dried prunes.
So, I had a quick think about what I could do with these. 60g of dried apricots and 65g of dried prunes provide quite a pack of sweetness. They ought to be useful for something larger than a very small snack.
This was what I came up with:
Fruit sushi!
I apologize in advance to sushi purists. This may technically not be sushi at all, but it is really good. And easy too.
Basically, buy some sushi rice and cook a portion as instructed on the packet. I take out a tablespoon of the water and add a tablespoon of sugar-free vanilla syrup (such as you can buy to put in your coffee.) I also added pinches of mixed spice, nutmeg and ginger to the water.
While the rice is cooking, measure out your apricots (or prunes) and dice them finely. I don’t cook them with the rice because I’m not sure what that would do to the syn value. I just mix the diced pieces in with the rice when I’ve taken it off the heat.
I thought about holding it together with sushi nori. But then I thought, ‘Dude! You really want to wrap this luscious sweetness in a vegetable redolent of decaying crabs?’ So I thought I would try to make a sweet omelette instead. Which turned out to be a great success.
While the rice is becoming cool enough to handle, beat two eggs with a tsp of coconut essence (or other flavouring of your choice. Pineapple is nice too.) Add some more spices. Cook into very thin omelettes/crepes.
Lay out your crepe on a tea-towel (or sushi rolling mat if you have one) and cover one half with a layer of the rice mixture. Slowly roll it up into a sausage and put into the fridge for an hour or so to get properly cold.
I did two because I have a small frying pan.
Once it’s cold, it will be solid enough to cut neatly with a sharp knife. Have some cold water with a dash of vinegar in it on hand to periodically dip the knife into. This stops the rice from sticking to the blade.
And there you go. Again, there’s two portions, afternoon tea and supper if, like me, you’re a grazer. Or dessert for lunch and dinner, if you’re a three-meals-a-day and no snacks sort, leaving all your syns untouched.