Avocado and Shrimp Sushi

Tried this tonight as our first sushi.  Directions were a little tough to follow -- "crosswise", "up", "down", "lower third."  What I ended up doing was spreading the rice (slightly overcooked jasmine worked wonderfully -- sticky with a nice little flavor to it) on all the nori but the last inch away from me, spreading the avocado and horseradish (didn't have wasabi) on the third closest to me, then the shrimp on top of that, followed by the cucumber and chives.  Don't have a sushi mat, so made do with a piece of Silpat with plastic.  (Probably could have done without the Silpat, but it didn't hurt.)  Rolled the sushi tightly (it did crack slightly, but worked out fine -- and you'll need to poke all the stuff falling out the sides back in), then used a trick when rolling tortilla wrap hors d'oeuvres  -- put the rolled sushi (in the plastic wrap) in the refrigerator until serving. Worked beautifully:  when I went to cut the sushi, it cut clean and presentation was lovely.  However:  flavor was lacking.  Both DH and I agreed that there should have been more avocado and horseradish/wasabi, double the amount at least.  The shrimp could have used a little something, perhaps marinated and grilled.  Used fresh chives and would increase those; the amount of cucumber was perfect.  Lastly, the dish needed a dipping sauce; because this was the first time we tried this we used plain soy sauce; although will not make again, would recommend Chili-Garlic Dipping Sauce from this site.  Should round out even the basic recipe without any modifications.

Phenomenal flavors in this one. We ended up with far more shrimp than we thought and nori sheets that were lacking, but making do with those hurdles, they still came out great. Our presentation was lacking as it was our first time rolling sushi, but that didn't hurt the taste one bit. We'll likely be using the avocado mixture on a number of different things in the future.