Question: What do you do when you’re tasked with making sushi for a group of friends, but one of your male friends has never eaten sushi and refuses to try raw fish?
Easy: MAN SUSHI. (Just imagine I’m saying that in a deep, “manly” voice.)
But what on earth is “Man Sushi”?
Well, what sort of food does your stereotypical man love? That’s an easy one: beef, and anything battered and fried. Of course.
All you have to do is put grilled beef teriyaki and tempura-fried vegetables in a sushi roll, (and throw in some spicy mayonnaise for good measure), and you’ll have a roll that your man will not only try, but will still be talking about a year later.
MAN SUSHI!
Case in point, I visited some friends of mine in Las Vegas in spring of 2010, and somehow got roped into making sushi for everyone. In addition to my ever-popular Spicy Shrimp Inari [1] and a variation on the Refugee from Reality Roll [2], I had them grill up some beef teriyaki (from this recipe [3]) and I fried up some tempura vegetables for this roll.
Over a year later, my friend tells me that her male roommate still talks about this roll. (And the rest of us are still shocked that we managed to convince him to even try sushi!)
Mission successful. ^_^ (And don’t worry, women love it too!)
Important Points of Business:
- Japan still needs your help! Tara, a food blogger/writer of whom I’m a huge fan, wrote a book [4] about her time living in Japan. All proceeds go to Japan relief funds. She’s an awesome writer, so I highly recommend buying her book.
- Congratulations to Lara [5], who won last week’s Good Fish cookbook giveaway!
- And lastly… I’m going to be speaking at BlogWorld Los Angeles this November!!! I’ll be giving two presentations – one will consist of me developing a WordPress theme from start to finish, live in front of the attendees, and the other will be all about microformats and Google’s Recipe View. If you want to attend BlogWorld Los Angeles, and maybe even come see me speak, you can buy tickets here [6], and you can use the code BWELA20 to get 20% off.
- Recipe [7]
Ingredients
- 6 sheets nori
- 3 cups sumeshi [8]
- top sirloin (get as much as you want. Although you probably only need about half a pound for the sushi, you probably will want to eat some straight off the BBQ since it’s so good!)
- 1 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup water
- 1/2 cup shoyu
- 2 cloves garlic, crushed and chopped
- 1/8 tsp grated ginger
- 2 batches tempura batter [9]
- 1 cup flour
- 1 onion, sliced thickly
- 1 bunch asparagus, with ends chopped off
- 1 sweet potato, sliced into 1/2-inch sticks
- 1/2 cup mayonnaise
- Sriracha sauce, to taste
Cooking Directions
- Mix the sugar, water, shoyu, garlic, and ginger in a large bowl.
- Remove as much fat as you can from the meat, and slice the meat across the grain into thin strips that are about 1.5 inches wide and 1/8 inch thick. Try to make these strips long, if possible.
- Place the meat in the marinade, and refrigerate overnight (or at least 1 hour), mixing every now and then so the all the meat gets marinated on all sides.
- Weave the meat onto skewers, and spread it so it is flat. If the strip of meat is short, put two or three strips of meat on the skewer. Discard the marinade.
- Barbecue the meat until it is well cooked. Remove the skewers from the meat.
- Cook sushi rice. [8]
- Coat the sliced vegetables in flour, then in the tempura batter, and tempura-fry [9] until golden-brown.
- Mix the mayonnaise and Sriracha sauce, to taste, and transfer to a squeeze bottle (or a plastic baggie with one of the tips cut off).
- Roll the sushi [10], using the beef teriyaki, tempura vegetables, and spicy mayonnaise for your fillings.
- Enjoy!