Sushi Rice: Fail!

The November 2009 Daring Cooks challenge was brought to you by Audax of Audax Artifex and Rose of The Bite Me Kitchen. They chose sushi as the challenge.

Well, I was not happy with how this challenge turned out for me. The problem was the rice: it was too dry, and did have enough seasoning.

I believe I did everything correctly, but the rice is SO important and it turned out poorly. I don't do the rice soak when I usually make sushi because everytime I've tried, it's too dry and just not good. I'm guessing it's due to Calgary's dry climate, but there was nothing in the challenge about that so too bad for me!

The challenge included making the rice, rolling a dragon roll, spiral/decorative rolls and nigiri. Most of them look pretty good, but yuck. Bri liked them though, and it's not as if they were inedible, just a pain in the ass because it took about 3 hours to make it.

These ones were a bit ridiculous. Before I cut the roll into pieces, the whole thing was the size of a sub sandwich. And not one on squishy bread either, the kind on a big baguette that you can't even fit in your mouth. Not my kind of sushi unfortunately.

Oh well, I will feed my sushi craving properly another time!

A basic sushi how-to

Well folks, here we are again, many weeks removed from my last post. The truth is, I've been cooking and experimenting all over the place, I just haven't made the time to write.

My birthday just passed so I'll be posting a couple recipes from that delicious spread. In the meantime, I am going to write a little sushi how-to here and I hope you'll be inspired to give it a try sometime based on my experience. This is as much to give me practice of writing good directions as it is to be informative for you so feel free to leave tip if you thought something was confusing, inadequate or if you liked it!

The photos were also a bit experimental and some of them aren't particularly good but I think they get the point across.

Weekly Roundup

I guess I am still trying to figure out some sort of a schedule for little bloggy here. Ideally I'd update daily, but I haven't set aside the time yet. Which in turn leads to posts such as this one which will be photo heavy and retrospective.

On to the show!

This past week saw Summer peek her sweaty, sunburnt brow from behind the clouds for the first time of the year. Temperatures were toeing the torrid line of 30 degrees Celsius (86 F) and the ultralow humidity of this prairie city turned downtown into an enormous and cruel sauna.

That meant minimal cooking for me as our apartment is not well equipped to deal with hot weather. I was tempted to bake biscuits and muffins but each sweaty time I opted instead to boil or panfry something tasty instead.

Exhibit A: Thai Peanut Stirfry. Adapted from this Allrecipes.com "Best Thai Peanut Sauce" link
Here is my version:

• 1/2 cup organic peanut butter (no sugar or other junk added) creamy or chunky
• 1/3 cup coconut milk
• 1 tbsp water
• 1.5 tbsp lime juice
• 1.5 tbsp soy sauce
• 1.5 tsp sesame oil
• 1.5 tsp hot sauce (I use Rooster Brand Chili Garlic Sauce)
• .5 tsp ginger powder
• 1.5 cloves garlic

Mix together in a bowl or shake in peanut butter jar, making sure all the peanut butter lumps are softened and mixed in. Let sit 30 minutes-1 hour to allow flavours to develop.

After that, it's completely versatile as far as starch, veg and protein. For this particular time, I made jasmine rice and Bribot stir-fried broccoli, cauliflower, cremini mushrooms and garlic. We pour our sauce onto the almost-cooked veg and let it thicken and cook for a bit before serving over rice. I think I may have gone a bit overboard with the coconut milk this time, because I was using up a can from earlier in the week. But it turned out amazing and very filling. Highly recommend you incorporate it in your repertoire.

The night after, we had gnocchi with jarred tomato-basil sauce. Very delicious and Bri was raving the whole time, and I was of course flattered because the man does eat a lot of pasta. Anyhow, it wasn't particularly filling so after dishes were done we decided to make movie snacks for during James Bond.

Exhibit B: Vegan Cheezy Sauce "Fundue" with roasted potatos, mushrooms and pickles.

Honestly, the pickles were a bit weird but the sauce is just so good that it doesn't even matter. I usually make the Cheezy Sauce recipe (from the Veganomicon) but Bri offered to do it this time, and it was divine.

Here's our version of the nutritional yeast gravy:

• 2 cups prepared veg broth
• 1/4 cup spelt flour (AP flour is fine too)
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• pinch of dried thyme
• 1/4 tsp sea salt (depending on saltiness of veg broth)
• fresh ground black pepper
• 1 tsp turmeric
• 3/4 cup nutritional yeast flakes (essential ingredient but we find it's still good if you only have 1/2 cup too)
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 tsp prepared mustard

1. Whisk flour into broth in a measuring cup and the until big lumps are gone.
2. Cook garlic in olice oil in small saucepan over medium-low heat about 2 minutes
3. add thyme, salt and pepper and cook for a few seconds, then add broth turmeric and nutritional yeast and raise heat to medium. Stir constantly with whisk.
   
4. It should thicken in about 3 minutes but just turn the heat up if it needs a bit longer
5. After it had thickened, let cook for another couple minutes, then add lemon juice and mustard. Taste for saltiness, adjust as needed, then remove from heat and cover until you're ready to eat. Irresistable. Keeps well in the fridge for a few days.

If you're unfamiliar with nutritional yeast, this is the time to try it! It's a bit smoky and cheesy in flavour and is a wonderful addition to all sorts of sauces, or even just sprinkled inside a wrap. High in B12 also!

Okay, so this is getting long so I'll be brief with Exhibit C: Back of the Fridge Sushi! Yesterday's dinner earned its name due to the rapidly thrown together fillings I chose. I had my weekly sushi craving but wasn't up to spending $20 on typical boring veggie rolls so after tossing a frisbee with Bri, I set to work on a big batch of sushi.

Fillings included: dill pickles, cream cheese, pickled banana peppers, vine tomato, pepper relish, dijon-Vegenaise, salad greens and barbecue sauce-marinate tofu strips.


Dinner turned out quite tasty in the end but not as good as previous sushi nights at home because I messed up the rice a bit, it was overcooked with too much moisture which made it tough to cute nicely and the rolls weren't as luscious as they could have been. On the bright side I actually rolled 3 whole regular maki (i.e. not inside out) and they all mostly stayed. Also experimented with some fat rolls, which turned out alright.

If you're interested in making sushi at home I suggest you read imakesushi.com and google some sushi rolling videos, that's how I got to this point. The price is so so much lower than a restaurant and it's really not difficult once you've rolled a few.