My wife thinks sushi is overrated and overpriced. I like sushi, but not enough to buy it for myself when my wife’s not around. And what I like most about sushi, I’m pretty sure, is the flavor of soy sauce and wasabi combined. Hence this sandwich.

Bold Flavors Snack of the Week: The Sushi Sandwich. It’s based on a California roll because those contents seemed like convenient enough ingredients to turn into a sandwich/delivery method for soy sauce and wasabi.

Directions:

1) Have a whole conversation with your wife about how you’d like to eat sushi more often even though she’s not that into it. Decide that you really just like the taste of soy sauce and wasabi. Conceptualize a sandwich.

2) Have mayo, soy sauce and Sriracha in your fridge.

3) Have that very same wife stop by the grocery store on her way home from her friends’ house and pick up a baguette, a ripe avocado, wasabi and crabmeat. Use real crabmeat even though it’s a bit more expensive. The sandwiches are only going to work out to like $4 each even with the good stuff.

4) Be surprised to learn that wasabi comes in powder form when you buy it at the store. Who knew? Maybe you, but not me. This is the first time I’ve owned my own wasabi. Pretty exciting day.

5) In a small bowl, stir wasabi powder into a large dollop of mayonnaise. I used about a heaping teaspoon of wasabi powder and maybe a third of a cup of mayo, but play around with it. If there’s too much wasabi, add mayo. I made it so the wasabi flavor is very evident in the mayo, but don’t worry about getting it spicy from wasabi. Too much wasabi will probably overpower the rest of the sandwich. At least that was my rationale.

6) Add soy sauce to the mayo. This one you want to be careful with: Soy sauce packs a lot of flavor and it’s a liquid, so if you add too much you’re going to have soupy mayo on your hands (literally; it’s a messy sandwich). I probably used a half a tablespoon of soy sauce, but I didn’t measure. It’s jazz baby, jazz. When you taste your wasabi/soy mayo, you should be able to taste wasabi and soy sauce and mayo. Pretty straightforward. I thought it would be a nasty color but it turns out it’s just beige.

7) Cut avocado into slices. Eat one, because avocado is delicious. Reserve the rest for, like, 30 seconds from now.

8) Cut baguette into appropriate sandwich-sized pieces. Slice them open, preferably without fully splitting them.

9) Assemble sandwich. Mine went like this: a thin layer of the mayo on the bottom part of the bread, a layer of avocado, a scoop of crabmeat, another drizzle of the mayo to keep the crabmeat moist, then a shot of Sriracha. You probably don’t want to go nuts with the crabmeat, since that stuff’s expensive and the sandwich is going to get some bulk from the avocado. I suppose you could add the mayo mixture to the crabmeat before you put it on the sandwich to create a crab salad, but I was concerned about the color of the mayo making the whole thing look unappetizing.

10) Eat sandwich. We boiled some edamame to accompany them, since it’s both delicious and thematically relevant. Same deal for the candied ginger we had for dessert.

This is a really good sandwich, and something I think I prefer to a California roll for no more money. It captured the wasabi/soy sauce flavor I wanted, but with more crab and avocado taste than I typically get when eating sushi and the added benefit of Sriracha spice. Plus it’s got a nice mix of textures, with the crunchiness of the baguette’s crust, the chewiness of the crab and the creaminess of the avocado. Next time I might try to incorporate some thinly sliced cucumbers for a little more crispiness and moisture, but I’m not sure they’re necessary.

The only issue with the sandwich is that it was kind of a mess. Use napkins, and maybe ready a fork to scoop up fallen crabmeat.