Dear LPG, 

I thought that my attempts at cooking would not involve much cooking at all today but when I decided on having a go at a raw fish dish I forgot about the rice.    It’s simple I thought, you just add water and cook it but there is more to it than that.  Waiting for it to cool was the easy bit but I had a go at making my own sushi vinegar and there was something a bit odd about adding loads of sugar to it.  

The rest was all about presentation and the sushi mat was key although I managed to overstuff my first pre-cut roll and split the seaweed (that one was a case of back to the drawing board).  Then I overcompensated; the second was a bit too thin I think because, when I had finished, it looked more like a long green cigar and the seaweed went at least one and a half times round it.  I ended up having to stuff more filling into the ends of the thing.  Then there was roll number three.  I was just getting better at it when the rice ran out but my third attempt was the best.  When I served up I found myself with a sushi version of the porridge Goldilocks found at the three bears house; one was much too fat, one was much too thin, but the other was as ‘just right’ as I could manage on the day and my taste team agreed that even the bad looking ones tasted quite good.  I have decided that trying to get the rice on the outside of the roll needs to be something for my second attempt at making this dish but we all agreed that you hardly realised that there was raw fish in it although the wasabi had a bit of a kick.  

March 21st is Namibia’s independence day and they have a vegetarian dish that I thought might be hearty and healthy for this time of year.  I think that the name intrigued me most and, although I can find only one version of the recipe on the internet, one of their diet stables appears to be Pap, so prepare to see my variation on their version of Namibian Pap with Cabbage.   As ever, if nothing else, it should be interesting… 

CB, Lewisham 

CB shares the only version of this recipe that she managed to find…

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