Rehydrate the shiitake mushrooms. Reserve the soaking water. Pour hot water over the aburaage to remove the excess oil.
Add the konbu seaweed and cook the rice with less water than usual.
Peel the lotus root and slice into thin quarters. Blanch in boiling water quickly and mix with rice vinegar while hot.
Julienne the carrot. Cut the aburaage in half and slice thinly. Thinly slice the rehydrated shiitake mushrooms.
I used Kyoto carrots (they're deeper in colour than usual carrots, almost red). The rice will look better that way, so use them if you can find them where you are.
Heat vegetable oil in a pot and fry the carrot. After it wilts, add sugar. After the carrot is coated with sugar, add soy sauce, shiitake and aburaage and fry further. Add water you used to re-hydrate the shiitake and bring to a boil. Turn the heat off and leave to cool to allow the ingredients to absorb the flavour of the seasonings.
Add the ○ ingredients to the beaten eggs and mix well. Make thin omelettes. After it cools, slice thinly to make kinshi-tamago. If you add the katakuriko slurry to the egg mixture before cooking, the omelettes won't break apart easily.
After the rice is cooked, do not stir. Transfer to a moistened sushi wooden barrel straight away. Mix in the sushi vinegar quickly.
It's important to cook the rice slightly harder than usual. Normally we use a fan to cool down the sushi rice quickly but it's a lot of work so instead I use the cold air setting of a hair dryer (laugh).
Mix in the lotus root from Step 3 into the sushi rice and scatter sesame seeds. Place the cooled toppings from Step 5 and kinshi-tamago from Step 6.
During Step 8, do not pour in any cooking liquid from Step 5. It will make the dish soggy. For 4 rice cooker cups of rice (720 ml).
Place the green garnishes on top. I used baby chrysanthemum greens from my garden. Salad cress, quickly blanched mangetouts or mizuna leaves would be nice too.
Each person can portion out however much they want, so it's a great dish for parties and events.
