Categories
Maki Recipes

Man Sushi


Tempura vegetables

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.)


Putting the roll together

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.


Adding mayonnaise

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 and a variation on the Refugee from Reality Roll, I had them grill up some beef teriyaki (from this recipe) 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!)


Rolling...

Important Points of Business:

  1. Japan still needs your help! Tara, a food blogger/writer of whom I’m a huge fan, wrote a book 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.
  2. Congratulations to Lara, who won last week’s Good Fish cookbook giveaway!
  3. 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, and you can use the code BWELA20 to get 20% off.


Sushi!

Ingredients
  • 6 sheets nori
  • 3 cups sumeshi
  • 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
  • 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
  1. Mix the sugar, water, shoyu, garlic, and ginger in a large bowl.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. Barbecue the meat until it is well cooked. Remove the skewers from the meat.
  6. Cook sushi rice.
  7. Coat the sliced vegetables in flour, then in the tempura batter, and tempura-fry until golden-brown.
  8. 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).
  9. Roll the sushi, using the beef teriyaki, tempura vegetables, and spicy mayonnaise for your fillings.
  10. Enjoy!

Categories
Other Sushi Randomness

New Year’s Sushi – Our first video!

For a while now, I’ve been wanting to do a video or two on Sushi Day.

And as I’ve mentioned in years past, New Year’s day is a huge sushi day for the Japanese side of my family.

So Son and I figured, why not combine the two?

Without further ado… our first Sushi Day video! Straight from my itsy bitsy kitchen, on New Year’s morning 2011.

(Note: if you’re outside of the US and can’t see the video, you can try watching it on Vimeo.)

Silly, yes. But aren’t I always? It was definitely a fun little video to put together, even if I was really rushed trying to do a video and roll all twenty rolls of sushi for my family’s New Year’s celebration at the same time.



(That photo was of half of the final result.)

So what did you guys think? Was it awesome… or did it totally suck? Would you like to see any more videos here on Sushi Day? (Or should I not quit my day job? ~_^) And if you would like to see more, what sort of videos would you like to see? …I’m completely open to suggestions. ^_^

Also, congratulations to Btrflywmn, who was the winner of last week’s sustainable seafood contest!

Categories
Other Sushi Randomness

Sustainable New Year’s Sushi, Anyone? (A contest!)



As I’ve mentioned in years past, sushi is a big tradition for my family (and many other Japanese families) on New Year’s day. (Gosh, I look so young in that post! No laughing.) I can’t remember a single year that we haven’t had some sort of sushi on New Year’s. And ever since I started Sushi Day four years ago, I’ve been the one to provide the sushi for my family.

So every year, this means buying a bunch of fish for my family. Nowadays, I try to be sustainable as I can. But I know as well as anybody how hard that can be when Japanese supermarkets stock so many types of unsustainable seafood on their shelves.

Because of that, I’m sure you can guess where I plan on buying my New Year’s sashimi this year. You know I’m a huge fan of I Love Blue Sea – I really can’t say enough good things about them. Their fish is fresh and delicious, and the entire experience of buying from them is fantastic.



For a while, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to get from them for New Year’s… maybe I would introduce my family to their delicious arctic char, or how about something even more unfamiliar, like black cod? Lucky for me, the guys at I Love Blue Sea have made things really easy for us – they put together a special sashimi package, which includes a pound each of arctic char, ahi tuna, and scallops. (Plus a tub of gari – pickled sushi ginger.) That will be more than enough to feed my whole extended family, and it’s a perfect variety so we won’t have too much of one type of fish.

I already ordered mine, and if you want one, there’s still time! Order by the evening of Wednesday, December 29th, and choose a shipment date of December 30th, so it will arrive on the 31st. Just in time for New Year’s!

(Don’t worry, they’re not paying me or even asking me to say any of this. I just really, really love their company and their seafood. Plus, they sent me photos of all of them wearing Sushi Day shirts. See how awesome they are? ^_^)

To top it all off, I talked to them the other day, and got the coolest hookup for you guys. One of you lucky people are going to get to win a sashimi package! (That’s an $80 value, including shipping costs!)

So I’m sure you’re wondering now, what do you have to do to win? Well, there are three easy ways to enter:

  1. Leave a comment on this post, and tell me what your New Year’s traditions are.
  2. “Like” Sushi Day and I Love Blue Sea on Facebook, then come back and leave a separate comment to say that you did.
  3. Tweet this: “Like sushi? I just entered to win $80 worth of sustainable seafood from @sushiday … you can too! http://goo.gl/szlQD”, then come back and leave a separate comment to say that you did.

Unfortunately, because this is a perishable product, entries are restricted to people with mailing addresses in the contiguous 48 states of the US (sorry Alaska, Hawaii, and everyone outside of the US!). The contest ends at 11:59PM PST on Monday, December 28. One entry per person for each of the three options (up to three entries per person). The winner will be selected randomly.

Good luck!



Categories
Other Recipes

Mackerel with Ginger & Green Onion, our giveaway winner, & we’re having a sale!



Congratulations to Lara! She was the winner of the sushi earrings.

In other news, we’re having a sale! From now until the end of the year, buy at least $40 worth of products from our Sushi Day store, and get $20 off. Our Sushi Day shirts are super-soft, way comfortable, and the perfect gift for every sushi lover in your life. Our Sushi Kits are great for anyone who wants to learn how to roll sushi at home, especially with New Year’s Day (a day where we eat tons of sushi!) coming up.

All you have to do is add $40 or more worth of Sushi Day stuff to your cart, then use the coupon code sushiholidays at checkout to get $20 off!



Mackerel. It’s a fishy fish. It’s a silvery fish. It’s a very sustainable fish.

A good thing indeed.

Now, not everybody likes the fishier tasting fish. Believe me, I know. I used to be one of them. But if you’re just starting to try the fishier fish, mackerel’s a good, mild one to try.

As simple and almost boring as it seems to eat mackerel with nothing more than ginger and scallions, it’s actually an excellent combination. The ginger cuts through the fishiness without being overwhelming, and the green onion lightens up the dish.

For someone who never much liked fishy fish… I really enjoyed this.



Ingredients
  • sashimi-grade mackerel
  • ginger root
  • green onion
  • shoyu
Cooking Directions
  1. Thinly slice the mackerel.
  2. Peel the ginger, then chop into short, thin sticks.
  3. Slice the green onion.
  4. Sprinkle the ginger and green onion over the mackerel, and serve with shoyu.
  5. Enjoy!

Coming Soon!

Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet. These values are only estimates based on the individual ingredients, and not meant to replace the advice of a medical professional.

Categories
Nigiri Recipes

Faux-Nagi



Congratulations to Katharine for her suggestion that Jell-O would NOT go well in wontons (can you imagine even trying? What an impossible mess that would be!) and to Cathy for her delicious-sounding suggestion of matcha pastry cream in a wonton, topped with a cherry sauce. They were the winners of our latest Sushi Day contest!

Thanks so much to everybody who entered!



If you’ve been reading Sushi Day for at least a year, or know anything about which seafood are sustainable and which aren’t, then you’re probably aware that unagi is on the list of very unsustainable seafood.

Which sucks. Because a lot of people really love unagi. Ourselves included.

So a year ago, I came up with my own version of a sustainable replacement for unagi, using catfish. Personally, I really love this, because the taste and texture are very similar to unagi.



But there’s been another recipe that’s been out there for a while too – I was aware of it when I came up with my version, although I didn’t use it. But after dining at Tataki and receiving some absolutely beautiful black cod as a gift from the guys at I Love Blue Sea, I knew I had to finally try Tataki’s recipe for faux-nagi.

The verdict? Well, I knew it was going to be good. And if you have access to all the ingredients, it’s definitely worth it.

(But if you can’t find good black cod, or some of the more exotic ingredients… I still think my version is pretty darn good too.)



Recipe originally from here.

Ingredients
  • 1 1/2 lbs black cod fillet
  • 1 large sheet konbu (kelp)
  • 1/4 c water
  • 1/4 c shoyu
  • 1/4 c sugar
  • 1 1/2 tbsp mirin
  • 1 1/2 tbsp sake
  • handful katsuobushi (skipjack flakes)
  • 1 tbsp potato starch
  • sea salt
  • sesame seeds
  • extra sake
Cooking Directions
  1. Sprinkle both sides of the black cod fillets with salt. Cover the fillets with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 15–20 minutes.
  2. Rinse the fillets with very cold water. Blot dry with a paper towel.
  3. Tear the konbu into pieces the size of your fillets. Wet a new paper towel with sake and use it to moisten the konbu. Sandwich the black cod between pieces of sake-moistened konbu. Cover the fillet in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30–40 minutes. Remove the konbu and return the fillet to the refrigerator.
  4. Mix the shoyu, sugar, mirin, and katsuobushi with 1 1/2 tbsp of sake and 1 1/2 tbsp of water in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer for about 10 minutes. Drain and remove the katsuobushi, then set the sauce aside.
  5. In a small bowl, combine 4 tbsp of cold water with 1 tablespoons of potato starch to create a thickener. Return the sauce to a boil then lower heat to a simmer. If desired, gradually add the potato starch thickener to the sauce, until the desired consistency is reached. (You may not use the entire batch of thickener.) Remove from heat and let cool.
  6. Slice black cod into portions into pieces approximately 1″x2″. Lightly char one side of the fish with a small butane torch or sear it very briefly in a hot saucepan. Drizzle with the sauce and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Serve nigiri style, or with a bowl of rice.

Coming Soon!

Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet. These values are only estimates based on the individual ingredients, and not meant to replace the advice of a medical professional.

Categories
Other Recipes

Arctic Char and Cream Cheese Wontons (Psst… we’re having a contest!)



I have a challenge for you.

Come up with something – anything (though it has to be edible food) – that wouldn’t go well in a wonton.

I bet you can’t do it.

(Neener neener!)

I mean, really. You can fold anything in a wonton skin, fry it up, and it’ll be delicious.

An. Y. Thing.

And if you can’t come up with something that would do badly in wontons? Give me a cool, crazy, awesome, ridiculously creative combination that you would put in a wonton.

Like these, which my great aunt asks me to make every year at our family’s annual Christmas party.

Or like this recipe here – arctic char with dill cream cheese, drizzled with a maple ponzu sauce.

Heck yeah.

Good stuff.

And… you know what?

I think I’ll give away a Sushi Day shirt and a sushi kit to the person who comes up with the best (edible!) suggestion for what WOULD NOT go well in wontons.

And I’ll give away another Sushi Day shirt and a sushi kit to the person who comes up with the best GOOD combination that I can put in a wonton.

You have 1 week to enter. That’s until next Thursday, November 18, at 11:59PM PST.

Ready… go!



The maple ponzu sauce was adapted from this maple-soy sauce, which was recommended to me by my friend Mike Kelly. Yum, yummy, yum.

Ingredients
  • 1 fillet very fresh arctic char (about 1/3 lb)
  • 20 oz cream cheese, softened
  • 1 tbsp dill, chopped
  • 20 wonton skins
  • 1/4 cup maple syrup
  • 2 tsp shoyu
  • 2 tsp fresh-squeezed orange juice
  • canola oil for frying
Cooking Directions
  1. If the arctic char fillet has skin and bones, carefully pick out all the bones, and scrape the pink flesh off of the skin. Discard any bones and skin. By now the arctic char probably resembles a lumpy mush, but if not, chop it a few times until it does.
  2. Mix the cream cheese with the dill.
  3. Spread a layer of cream cheese on one triangular half of a wonton skin, then top with about a tablespoon of arctic char. Dampen the edges of the wonton with water, then fold over the other half of the wonton skin and press along the edges to seal it. Repeat until you have used up the arctic char.
  4. Heat the oil to 400°F.
  5. Fry the wontons, about 10 seconds on each side. They should be a very light golden brown, just barely starting to brown around the edges. We still want the arctic char to be mostly raw inside the wonton. Drain on a cooling rack.
  6. Mix the maple syrup, shoyu, and orange juice. Drizzle over the wontons.
  7. Enjoy!

Coming Soon!

Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet. These values are only estimates based on the individual ingredients, and not meant to replace the advice of a medical professional.

Categories
Other Recipes

Arctic Char Rosette Chirashi



Every time I get a new type of fish, I try to think of good flavor combinations that I can use as inspiration for my dishes. I look through my bookmarks for recipes using that fish. I ask people on twitter. I look back in my archives for older, similar recipes for inspiration.

For today’s recipe, for example, I found a salmon recipe that I had bookmarked a while ago and decided that the sauce looked fantastic, then deconstructed a salmon recipe I had made years ago for the dish itself.



This week, I ordered some arctic char from I Love Blue Sea. After trying arctic char when we visited Tataki while we were in San Francisco, I knew I wanted to make some of my own dishes using the salmon-like fish.

Now that I’ve finally ordered fish from I Love Blue Sea… I can finally officially recommend them. The fish arrived in a timely matter and was fresh, and ready to use for sashimi. The one tip I have for buyers, though, is if you want the fish for a certain day, make sure to take a look at their shipping schedule so you’ll know what your deadline for ordering is. (For example, if you want the fish by Saturday, then you have to order before 5AM Pacific Time on Thursday. Otherwise it won’t be shipped until the next Monday.)

And then once you’ve ordered the fish from them… you can make this arctic char chirashi. If you like Philadelphia Rolls, you’ll love this. ^_^



The mustard sauce is adapted from the sweet mustard sauce on Steamy Kitchen.

(You might argue that this can’t be chirashi because it doesn’t use sumeshi, but the marinade from the cucumbers is very similar to the mixture for sushi vinegar, so once you add the cucumbers to the rice it emulates the flavor of sumeshi.)

Ingredients
  • cooked white rice
  • 1 batch of marinated cucumbers (do not discard all of the marinade)
  • 1 lb very fresh arctic char
  • 2 oz cream cheese
  • wasabi (to taste; optional)
  • 2 tbsp dijon mustard
  • 1 tbsp honey
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 1/2 tsp lemon juice
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp garlic powder
Cooking Directions
  1. Mix the dijon mustard, honey, olive oil, lemon juice, salt, and garlic powder. Set aside.
  2. Fill a bowl two-thirds full with cooked white rice.
  3. Top with a layer of marinated cucumbers. Drizzle with some of the extra marinade from the cucumbers.
  4. Thinly slice the arctic char. Roll each slice into a rosette; place on top of the layer of cucumbers.
  5. Place a small ball of cream cheese in the center of each rosette. If you like spice and wasabi, you can fill the center of one of the rosettes with wasabi.
  6. Drizzle with the mustard sauce.
  7. Enjoy!

Coming Soon!

Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet. These values are only estimates based on the individual ingredients, and not meant to replace the advice of a medical professional.

Categories
Maki Recipes

Porki Maki

Pork belly.

It’s kind of like bacon, right? Except… better. If that’s even possible.

Pork belly roll

And we all know how I feel about bacon in sushi.

So pork belly in sushi? It’s the natural progression. Obviously.

Pork belly roll

Porki Maki

Ingredients
Cooking Directions
  1. Cook pork belly. (This needs at least 6 hours of marination and 2 hours of cooking, so prepare ahead.)
  2. Cook sumeshi.
  3. Thinly slice the pork belly, then cut each slice in half lengthwise.
  4. Roll the sushi, using the pork belly, green onion, and wasabi (to taste) as the fillings.
  5. Enjoy!

Categories
Other Sushi Randomness

Tataki Sushi Bar – San Francisco, CA


The front view of Tataki Sushi Bar

Ever since getting to know Casson Trenor and going to the Mashiko dinner a year ago, I’ve been wanting to go to the sustainable sushi restaurant that Casson is part-owner of, Tataki.


A Monterey Bay Seafood Watch Guide at every table

Problem is, I live in Los Angeles. Tataki is in San Francisco. And every time we go up to the Bay Area, we’re down in Silicon Valley, with no time or way to get all the way up to San Francisco.

So when we decided to spend an entire week in San Francisco, we knew we would be having dinner at Tataki one of the nights.

And then our schedule filled up. It was ridiculous.

But after our interview with I Love Blue Sea, we discovered that we had a few free hours between then and when I was planning on cooking dinner for our gracious hosts (my aunt and uncle). So we took a detour, and went to Tataki for lunch.


Me!

We got there not long after they opened, so the restaurant was mostly empty while we were there. By the time we were about to leave, the restaurant was beginning to fill up with the lunch rush.


The view of the sushi bar


The inside of the restaurant

We ordered the sashimi lunch (three types of sashimi with miso soup), an order of faux-nagi, and an arctic char/avocado roll.


Miso soup

Miso soup… always good.


Monterey Bay Seafood Watch Participating Restaurant placard

The sashimi was excellent. It was my first time trying any of these three sustainable options. The arctic char tastes just like salmon (no surprise, the two species are related). The albacore tuna is denser, but melts in your mouth. The sea bass had a chewier mouthfeel – it was my least favorite of the three, but still delicious.


Albacore tuna, arctic char, and sea bass sashimi

The faux-nagi is a sustainable fish made to taste like unagi (because unagi isn’t sustainable). It’s made from black cod – marinated, seared, then drizzled with eel sauce.

It was delicious. Although it wasn’t exactly like unagi, it was pretty close. I didn’t miss unagi one bit.


Faux-nagi

Lastly was the arctic char and avocado roll. Although I make some crazy weird sushi combinations here, my favorites always end up being the simplest ones – and this was no exception. It was perfect.


Arctic char and avocado roll

I only wish I lived near San Francisco, because I would love to try Tataki’s dinner menu – it’s much more extensive than the lunch menu. But all in all, a great meal!