I love sushi and I love sake. I also love to cook and to teach people about wine. So why did the idea of a homemade sushi and sake tasting fill me with massive fear and insecurity?

My friend Dave (who I have actually known since before birth–our parents were in the same Lamaze class!) has been pestering me about doing just such a tasting for two years now and I have continually found excuses to delay.

Finally, he just went out and sent invitations to his friends and told me that he would forge ahead without me if need be. Apparently, this was the kick in the butt I needed! Within the hour, I had put together a list of seven sakes that represented an interesting diversity of the myriad styles available.

I chose a sparkling sake, a junmai ginjo, a junmai daiginjo, honjyozo, kimoto style, nigori, and a fruit-infused style. If this all sounds like jibberish to you, don’t worry. The internet is full of great resources to give you a basic Sake 101–or talk to your local fine wine shop–many are carrying a selection of sakes. I will admit that I didn’t know exactly what I was doing, but that’s how you learn, right?

So, sake taken care of, it was time to move on to the food. Dave is the king of dinner parties and smartly delegated shopping tasks to our motley crew so that no one would be overwhelmed. This was the perfect way to have everyone feel involved and dramatically reduced the amount of pressure on our shoulders. With strength in numbers, I knew we were ready to tackle the sushi hurdle!

When Saturday night rolled around, the kitchen was soon filled with people chopping, slicing, steaming, and sautéing. Just like with the shopping, everyone took up a task.

We snacked on pickled daikon, toasted seaweed, miso soup, and edamame, and before I knew it we had a sushi smorgasbord ready to go! There were platters of avocado, scallions, cucumbers, shitake mushrooms, tempura sweet potato, thin strips of omelette, salmon, tuna, and crispy salmon skin. To accent, there was a creamy spicy sauce, mango chutney, cream cheese, and wasabi.

We all teamed together to figure out how those simple looking rolling mats actually worked, and soon it was a maki assembly line! I was honestly amazed. It looked fantastic and tasted even better.

What exactly had I been worrying about all this time? As the sake and conversation flowed, all I could think was when could we do it again!