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Tuna Cucumber Watermelon

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These are cute little tuna appetizers made to look like watermelons. Great for parties, they make perfect finger-food, and are much less work than making a whole bunch of sushi for a party! Not to mention, they are delicious!

This recipe has a lot of contrasting flavors. The cool of the cucumber versus the heat of the Siracha sauce. The soft, yielding texture of the tuna, as opposed to the snappy crunch of the cucumber slice. The creamy flavor of the mayonnaise versus the clean, fresh flavor of the cucumber and tuna. So it’s not really sushi – no sushi rice in the recipe – but sushi lovers will love this dish!

I got this idea from Sushi American Style by Tracy Griffith.

Ingredients
  • 1 cucumber
  • 4 tbsp mayonnaise
  • 4 tsp Sriracha sauce
  • 1 oz black sesame seeds
  • 6 oz sashimi-grade tuna
Cooking Directions
  1. Mince tuna.
  2. Mix with mayonnaise and Sriracha sauce.
  3. Slice cucumber into rounds.
  4. Top each cucumber slice with a small scoop of the tuna mix.
  5. Sprinkle a few sesame seeds on top, so it looks like a watermelon with black seeds.
  6. Enjoy!

Serving Size: 1 piece Tuna Cucumber Watermelon

  • Calories: 80
  • Fat: 6g, 10% DV
  • Saturated Fat: 1g, 5% DV
  • Cholesterol: 7g, 2% DV
  • Sodium: 56g, 2% DV
  • Total Carbohydrates: 2g, 1% DV
  • Dietary Fiber: 1g, 3% DV
  • Sugars: 0g
  • Protein: 4g, 8% DV
  • Vitamin A: 6%
  • Vitamin C: 1%
  • Calcium: 5%
  • Iron: 5%
  • Magnesium: 6%
  • Potassium: 2%

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.

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Orange-Flavored Mochi

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Lately, I’ve really been wanting to participate in more food blogging events, but I’ve refrained because the don’t fit into the theme of Sushi Day, and I don’t want too much non-sushi randomness on here. I would love to cook and bake more but, well, I’ll save that for when I have a more general food blog. (Which is hopefully coming soon!) However, when I saw the theme for this month’s Sugar High Friday, hosted by Tartelette, I realized that this was something that I could relate to Sushi Day! Although my recipe isn’t sushi (sorry guys) it is a Japanese dessert!

I have been wanting to make mochi (sweet rice cakes) ever since I began cooking. I have had a life-long love affair with the dessert. Since I was young, my mother would take us to each get a piece of mochi whenever we went to the Japanese part of town. So you would think that now that I have discovered a love for cooking, that would be the first thing I make! Unfortunately, I was always so intimidated by it, so I never actually made it until now. What a mistake that was! This is the quickest, easiest recipe ever… and it turns out with the same taste and consistency as the mochi I bought as a child!

You can replace the orange extract with any flavor you would like, for different flavor mochi. Same goes for the food coloring… the mochi can be any color you want, or even multiple colors! ๐Ÿ˜› Considering I’ve only made this once, I might edit the recipe in the future if I find anything that makes it easier or better.

Ingredients
  • 1 cup mochiko
  • 1 cup water
  • 1/3 cup sugar
  • 2 drops red food coloring
  • 4 drops yellow food coloring
  • 1/2 tsp orange extract
  • corn starch or potato starch
Cooking Directions
  1. Mix all the ingredients.
  2. Pour into a microwave-safe container.
  3. Cover with plastic wrap.
  4. Microwave on HIGH for 4 minutes.
  5. Let cool for 1-2 minutes.
  6. Form into your desired shapes. (BEWARE: It will be hot and sticky! Don’t burn yourself. If you wish to cut it, use a plastic knife and dip it in corn starch in between cuts- it sticks less that way.)
  7. Dust with corn starch.
  8. Eat!

Nutrition data coming soon!

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Spicy Hamachi Gunkan Maki

I love yellowtail. We all know that. You might also know that I love the mayonnaise mix that I used in the Maguro Karakuchi Spicy Tuna Roll. (I put it in tuna salad, and I’m seriously considering hard-boiling some eggs and putting it in egg salad!) So of course, I had to see what happened when I put both together! However, since I like to mix things up a little, I couldn’t do exactly the same roll, just with yellowtail instead of tuna! (Well, I could, but how interesting would that really be?) Lucky for me, I’ve got awesome-as-can-be readers. One of my awesome readers, Kevin, commented saying that he had made something similar to my Maguro Karakuchi Spicy Tuna, except he made it gunkan-style with the sauce on the top, instead of as a roll. Genius! Pure genius! Thus the natural thing for me to do is to steal… er… borrow his idea and make it with yellowtail!

It was delicious. I will be making it again. Kevin, you win the Awesome Sushi Day Reader Award! ๐Ÿ˜€

spicy hamachi gunkan maki

Ingredients
  • 4 sheets nori
  • 3 cups sumeshi
  • 6 oz sashimi-grade yellowtail
  • 1 cup mayonnaise
  • 2 tbsp Sriracha sauce
  • 1 oz tobiko
  • 6 stalks green onion
Cooking Directions
  1. Cook sushi rice.
  2. Form a small ball of rice with your hands or use a round cookie cutter to make a small circular rice shape about 1รขโ‚ฌยณ tall and 2 inches in diameter.
  3. Cut the nori into 2รขโ‚ฌยณ strips. Wrap a strip of nori around the circumference of each rice ball.
  4. Wash the green onion, cut the long green stalks off of the white bulb-like things. Discard the white bulbs.
  5. Chop the green onion.
  6. Mix the mayonnaise, Sriracha sauce, tobiko and green onion.
  7. Slice yellowtail into 1 cm diameter slices.
  8. Curl each strip of yellowtail into a circle, fit on top of the rice into the nori.
  9. Top the yellowtail with some of the mayonnaise mix.

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Cheese Age

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I first introduced you to Cheese Age waaaay back when I first tried them at Honda-Ya for Son’s birthday. Yeah, I’m a bit behind in my posts, can you tell? ๐Ÿ˜€ Anyways, I promised you I would try making them and then write a post about them… and I did! Make them anyways. I made them for my great-aunt’s Christmas party the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and they were a hit! One of my great-aunts loved them so much, she took all of the left-overs home!

These are addictive. Quite spicy, so I can only eat one at a time and run for water between pieces, but soooo good! Plus, these are a perfect snack to bring for a Super Bowl party! (I’m actually doing this… I’ll make them Saturday, refrigerate them overnight, then send them with Son because unfortunately I can’t be at his friends’ Super Bowl Party this year!) Cheesy, spicy, fried… perfect with a beer or two while watching the big game! Of course, if you are more in the mood for sushi for your Super Bowl party, you can definitely check out our Super Bowl Rock N’ Roll that I made last year (a suggestion by one of our favorite readers, Ralph Whitbeck! ๐Ÿ˜€ ).

Ingredients
  • 1 package of wonton skins (I used the square ones, but you can use the round ones instead if you would like)
  • 1 package of Velveeta individual cheese slices
  • 1 jar of sliced jalapeños
  • vegetable oil
  • 1 egg white
Cooking Directions
  1. Lay down a wonton skin so one of the corners is pointing towards you. (I’m writing this as if you are using a square wonton skin. If you are using a round one, then it doesn’t matter which side is towards you ๐Ÿ˜› )
  2. Place a jalapeño slice just below the halfway point of the wonton skin.
  3. Break the cheese slice into thirds.
  4. Break each third of the cheese slice into pieces, arrange on top of and around the jalapeño.
  5. Using a pastry brush ,brush the bottom two edges of the wonton skin with egg white.
  6. Fold the top half of the wonton skin down over the fillings.
  7. Press the edges together to seal the wonton.
  8. Pour enough oil into a frying pan so it is at least an inch deep, heat it until it is hot (sorry, I have no exact temperature for you).
  9. Place one layer of the filled wontons into the pan.
  10. Fry wontons until they are golden brown. When we did this, we found that they expanded quite a bit and would start to leak cheese if one of the sides hit the bottom of the hot pan (which is why we want the oil to be deep enough so this doesnt happen.
  11. Let cool, and enjoy!

Serving Size: 1 piece Cheese Age

  • Calories: 25
  • Fat: 1g, 1% DV
  • Saturated Fat: 0g, 2% DV
  • Cholesterol: 2mg, 1% DV
  • Sodium: 133mg, 6% DV
  • Total Carbohydrates: 4g, 1% DV
  • Dietary Fiber: 0g, 0% DV
  • Sugars: 0g
  • Protein: 1g, 1% DV
  • Vitamin A: 2%
  • Vitamin C: 1%
  • Calcium: 2%
  • Iron: 0%
  • Magnesium: 0%
  • Potassium: 0%

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.

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Japanese Potato Salad

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A couple of months ago, I was offered a cookbook called Harumi’s Japanese Home Cooking, by Harumi Kurihara, to review and try recipes from. Of course, I have been so swamped lately, I have barely had time to make sushi, let alone review a cookbook. Finally, I had some time to look through it and flag a few recipes I wanted to try. This coincided perfectly with Yvo’s Bento Contest, so I figured that Japanese Potato Salad would be a perfect addition to a bento box. The way it turned out for me, it was just so-so, but I have a feeling this recipe would have turned out considerably better if I had more kitchen experience (have I ever steamed/boiled potatoes? No. I just make sushi. You get my point…).

First off, the potatoes would have done much better if they were steamed longer or boiled instead. The time given in the recipe was perfect for the carrots, but the potatoes, while they seemed softish coming out of the steamer, ended up harder than I would have liked and while edible, not the most pleasant of things. The carrots, on the other hand, were steamed perfectly, and were a fantastic addition to potato salad.

As for the onions, I would have used less, or even scrapped them altogether and replaced them with green onions (now that would have been good!). The onions had a bit too much bite to them, and detracted from the overall smoothness of the potato salad.

I think I used possibly twice as much mayonnaise as the recipe called for, because believe me… the batch is huge! It could probably feed a whole picnic. Plus I like mayonnaise, so it’s really up to your tastes.

I think one more change I would make, if I were to make this again, would be to add hard boiled eggs to the potato salad. She mentioned using them, as a side note, but they weren’t included in the main recipe so I didn’t use them. I love hard boiled eggs however, and I think they would be a fantastic addition to the potato salad.

I would make this again, with the changes I mentioned above, although I will probably halve the recipe unless I am bringing it to a big party… there’s no way Son and I can eat this all up in a timely manner!

There are a bunch more recipes I want to try from this cookbook. She has a ton of recipes, ranging from the most traditional (miso soup, tamago), to more modern recipes that still use Japanese ingredients such as sashimi and shiso. (Speaking of sashimi, tuna recipes are coming! I had the fortune to get a huge piece of tuna sashimi recently, so I made a ton of sushi with it! Yummmm….) Anyways, if you love Japanese food and want the traditional recipes but also want to mix things up a bit, you should definitely buy this book! ๐Ÿ˜€

Ingredients
  • 1.5 lbs large potatoes
  • .5 lb large carrots
  • 1 tsp granulated chicken stock powder
  • 2/3 cup cucumber
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/3 cup onion
  • 1 cup mayonnaise
  • salt and coarsely ground pepper
Cooking Directions
  1. Wash the potatoes and carrots but do not peel.
  2. Place in a hot steamer and cook for about 25 minutes over medium heat, taking care to top the water from time to time as needed. Prick the vegetables with a toothpick or skewer to see if cooked and remove when done.
  3. Peel the potatoes and carrots while hot, and then transfer the potatoes to a bowl and roughly break up. Mix in the chicken stock powder and leave to cool. Chop the carrots in half lengthways and slice into 1/5-inch-thick semicircular pieces. You can make quarter-button shapes by chopping the halved carrot again lengthways before slicing.
  4. Cut the cucumber in half lengthways and, using a spoon, remove the seeds. Cut each half again lengthways and then slice into 1/5-inch-thick pieces. In a separate bowl, sprinkle salt over the cucumber and leave for about 2-3 minutes to soften, then squeeze to remove excess liquid. Cut the onion in half, slice and soak in water to remove any bitterness, then drain and pat dry.
  5. When the potato is cool, add the carrots, cucumber and onions and lightly mix. Stir in the mayonnaise, salt and pepper, and serve.

Serving Size: 1 cup Japanese Potato Salad

  • Calories: 171
  • Fat: 10g, 16% DV
  • Saturated Fat: 2g, 8% DV
  • Cholesterol: 5g, 2% DV
  • Sodium: 358g, 15% DV
  • Total Carbohydrates: 18g, 6% DV
  • Dietary Fiber: 2g, 9% DV
  • Sugars: 2g
  • Protein: 2g, 4% DV
  • Vitamin A: 61%
  • Vitamin C: 15%
  • Calcium: 2%
  • Iron: 5%
  • Magnesium: 6%
  • Potassium: 14%

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.

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Does This Make My Lunch Look Phat?

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About a month ago, Yvo from Feisty Foodie announced “Does This Make My Lunch Look Phat?, a contest on her blog. She makes a bento for lunch every day, so her contest is to create a bento box and blog about it. I was super excited when I heard about this… I have loved looking at all her different daily bento boxes, and have wanted to make my own for quite some time now. So of course I jumped at the excuse to make my own bento! ๐Ÿ˜€

The bento box I used was one I got for Son a year or so ago, that he uses to bring lunch to work sometimes.

Bento Box!
Bento Box!

On the top level, there is Japanese Potato Salad (recipe coming soon), Japanese Pickles (recipe at bottom), and grapes. The bottom layer has Stuffed Somen Salad and a crêpe from my Taste and Create III post. This one was filled with honey ham, steamed asparagus, and a cheese sauce (recipe at bottom).

Bento Box!

I love love loved the bento! If I could eat like this every day… yum! ๐Ÿ˜€

Ingredients
  • 2 Japanese cucumbers
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tbsp sugar
  • 1 tbsp rice vinegar
Cooking Directions
  1. Wash the cucumbers.
  2. Slice the cucumbers thinly.
  3. Mix all ingredients, let sit for 10 hours or overnight.
  4. Sprinkle with red chili powder, if desired. Enjoy!

Serving Size: 1 cup Japanese Pickles

  • Calories: 115
  • Fat: 1g, 1% DV
  • Saturated Fat: 0g, 0% DV
  • Cholesterol: 0g, 0% DV
  • Sodium: 2866g, 119% DV
  • Total Carbohydrates: 24g, 8% DV
  • Dietary Fiber: 4g, 16% DV
  • Sugars: 20g
  • Protein: 3g, 7% DV
  • Vitamin A: 8%
  • Vitamin C: 30%
  • Calcium: 8%
  • Iron: 6%
  • Magnesium: 16%
  • Potassium: 22%

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.

Ingredients
  • 1/4 cup milk
  • 1/4 cup shredded cheddar cheese
  • 1/4 cup mayonnaise
Cooking Directions
  1. Stir all ingredients in a small saucepan over medium heat until melted.
  2. Serve over steamed asparagus, or most any other steamed vegetable.

Serving Size: 3/4 cup Cheese Sauce

  • Calories: 611
  • Fat: 59g, 91% DV
  • Saturated Fat: 19g, 94% DV
  • Cholesterol: 85g, 28% DV
  • Sodium: 765g, 32% DV
  • Total Carbohydrates: 3g, 1% DV
  • Dietary Fiber: 0g, 0% DV
  • Sugars: 3g
  • Protein: 16g, 32% DV
  • Vitamin A: 14%
  • Vitamin C: 0%
  • Calcium: 47%
  • Iron: 4%
  • Magnesium: 2%
  • Potassium: 3%

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.

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Stuffed Somen Salad

Every year the weekend of Thanksgiving, my Japanese great aunts throw a huge Christmas party. The entire family is invited, so it’s a huge day of craziness, fun, and tons of really good Japanese food. I have fond memories of eating sushi and somen salad (somen is a type of Japanese noodle) and watching while all the adults played white elephant. Unfortunately, once I started performing Nutcracker every year the party conflicted with the performances, so I haven’t gone since I was pretty young.

I have been craving somen salad for a while now, but I didn’t know what it was called so I couldn’t ask my mom about it. So of course I was elated when I walked into the kitchen a week ago and smelled the dressing! She put the somen salad in inari packets… just when I thought somen salad couldn’t get any better! Believe me… this is heaven!!! I really could eat this the rest of my life… it’s pretty light but still makes a good meal, and it’s sooooo good! Just try it… I promise that you will love it too!

(Why is my somen salad funny colors? I happened to have some purple sweet potato somen in my pantry, so I used that for the somen salad! It definitely made the appearance more interesting, however I was a little disappointed that it didn’t affect the taste at all.)

stuffed somen salad

Ingredients
  • 1 package aburaáge
  • 8 oz or 2 bundles of somen noodles
  • 1/2 cup shredded nori
  • 1 small Japanese cucumber, finely chopped (use regular cucumber if you can’t find Japanese cucumber)
  • 6 oz imitation crab, finely chopped
  • 3.5 tbsp sugar
  • 3 tbsp rice vinegar
  • 3 tbsp sesame oil
  • a dash of mirin
Cooking Directions
  1. Break each bundle of somen noodles into thirds.
  2. Boil a pot of water.
  3. Add the somen and carefully stir.
  4. Boil for 3 minutes.
  5. Drain and rinse with cold water.
  6. Mix the sugar, rice vinegar, sesame oil and mirin together in a small bowl.
  7. Mix noodles with nori, cucumber, imitation crab and sauce together.
  8. Prepare the aburaáge, but don’t prepare any sumeshi.
  9. Stuff each piece of aburaáge with about 1/4 cup somen salad. Be careful… the somen salad is slippery so it can be a bit difficult to stuff the aburaáge.
  10. Enjoy!

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Independence Day Sushi Parfait

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Happy Independence Day! I hope everyone is having a fun Fourth of July celebration! Well, my American readers anyways. Sorry everyone else. ๐Ÿ™

Now don’t get mad at me, because I know this isn’t really sushi, or even that close, but I’m going to post it anyways! Because I can. ๐Ÿ˜€ It’s only real claim to sushi is the rice pudding, (yeah, I didn’t even use sumeshi!!!) but if you don’t like rice pudding then it’s completely not sushi, just another (yummy!) dessert. It’s certainly festive though, and nice and cool on a hot summer day like today (well, for us anyways).

I’ll be over at my parent’s house most of today, because the city where they live allows fireworks, and the city where I’m living doesn’t. Unfortunately this year there are a bunch of restrictions because we are already having so many fires in CA because of the drought we are in this year. It sucks, but at least they haven’t banned fireworks completely yet! Plus my parents are having a BBQ, which gives me even more reason to go over there! Hamburgers, pasta salad, corn on the cob, deviled eggs, spinach dip, chocolate banana cream pie and chocolate torte. Yum! ๐Ÿ˜€ Have a great Fourth of July!

Makes 6 servings.

Ingredients
  • 3 cups Berry Blue Jell-O
  • 3 cups Strawberry (or some other red flavor) Jell-O
  • 6 cups rice pudding
  • 6 strawberries
  • 18 blueberries
Cooking Directions
  1. You can buy the Jell-O pre-made in the little cups or buy the little boxes of powder and make it as directed on the package. I bought my strawberry Jell-o pre-made, and made the Berry Blue Jell-O from the package, since they didn’t have any pre-made at the store.
  2. You can also buy the rice pudding pre-made like I did, if you have a whole lot of cooking to do that day, or you can make it from scratch. I reccomend this recipe, omitting the raisins. If for some reason you don’t like rice pudding, you can substitute it with vanilla pudding. If you don’t like that either, then you’re on your own because I can’t think of anything else to substitute it with. ๐Ÿ˜‰
  3. Wash the blueberries and strawberries.
  4. Slice up the strawberries.
  5. Mash the blue Jell-O with a cutting motion, using a spoon or a knife. Scoop about 1/2 cup of the blue Jell-O into each of six parfait glasses.
  6. Gently scoop about 1/2 cup of rice pudding into each glass on top of the blue Jell-O, making sure not to mix it with the Jell-O.
  7. Mash the red Jell-O with a cutting motion, using a spoon or a knife. Scoop about 1/2 cup of the red Jell-O into each glasses on top of the rice pudding.
  8. Gently scoop about 1/2 cup of rice pudding into each glass on top of the red Jell-O, making sure not to mix it with the Jell-O.
  9. Garnish each glass with 3 blueberries and one sliced strawberry. Store in the fridge until ready to serve. Enjoy!

Coming Soon!

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Inari Con Gambas Al Ajillo

On Father’s Day, after I was finished making the sushi, my mom made tapas. My sister always requests them, because she went to Spain over spring break on a trip with some of her teachers and classmates from her high school. She’s such the world traveller… plus she got to go to Kenya in middle school!!! Lucky girl. Hehe I haven’t been out of the U.S. 48 continental states! Anyways, she loved the food when she was in Spain, so my mom tried making some and they came out great! So since I had just finished making Inari-Zushi I figured why not mix them! And let me tell you, it came out great! The tapas have a lot of spices and were very salty, which balances extremely nicely with the sweetness of the inari-zushi.

Inari Con Gambas Al Ajillo

The tapas recipe that my mom used (and that I used here) is from GroupRecipes.com.

Inari Con Gambas Al Ajillo

Makes 12 pieces

Ingredients
  • Inari-Zushi
  • 1/2 – 3/4 pound small shrimp, shelled
  • coarse salt
  • 8 tablespoons olive oil
  • 3 large cloves garlic, peeled and very coarsely chopped
  • 1/2 teaspoon paprika
  • 1 tablespoon minced parsley
Cooking Directions
  1. Dry the shrimp well.
  2. Sprinkle salt on both sides.
  3. Let sit at room temperature for 10 minutes.
  4. Heat the oil over medium heat, then add the garlic.
  5. When the garlic starts to turn golden add the shrimp.
  6. Stir for about 2 minutes or until the shrimp are just done.
  7. Sprinkle in the paprika and parsley.
  8. Make the Inari-Zushi.
  9. Place four to six pieces of shrimp on the inari, and eat!