Category: Sushi

Several people have told us that we should try making sushi using apples and shrimp, so finally we have! I know everyone always says to use Fuji apples for their sweetness… but I didn’t have any so I just made do with what I had! These apples were sweet too though, so I figure it’s fine! 🙂 The cheese definitely helped, as it was sweet but a little bland without the saltiness and spice of the cheese.

So this is random… but I am completely and totally addicted to So You Think You Can Dance. I get so emotionally attached to the dancers… I’m always mad when a dancer I really liked gets voted off! (Like when Jessi was voted off by the judges because she had been sick the day before, or when Hok got voted off last week!) Yes yes, I am a dork, I know. 😛 I suppose part of the reason is because I was a dancer for most of my life, and only recently stopped dancing so I still fantasize about being on that show, working with all of those amazing choreographers! Wouldn’t that be a dream come true! Haha not a chance of that, but I can dream, right? Oh, and I’ll give you a hint about one of the new projects that Son and I are working on… it has to do with dance! The blog related to the project will be up soon, so I’ll have a link to it if anyone is interested in reading it.

Also, I was recently looking at Karianne’s web site (if you haven’t seen it, you should check it out!), and saw a post about a Sushi Competition! Hehe it sounds like a lot of fun… if any of you are in London or are lucky enough to be able to go, please please PLEASE let me know how it goes! (I have school 😛 and I can’t exactly get to London anyways!) I would love to hear about all the awesome sushi creations that they have there!

Ingredients

• 6 sheets nori
• 3 cups sumeshi
• 2 red apples
• 6 slices pepperjack cheese
• 1.5 cups mini shrimp, peeled, deveined and cooked

Cooking Directions

1. Cook sushi rice.
2. Core the apples, cut each apple into 9 slices.
3. Cut each slice of cheese into thirds.
4. Roll the sushi, using 3 slices of apple, one slice worth of cheese, and 1/4 cup mini shrimp as your fillings.
5. Serve and enjoy!

A few weeks ago, Yvo posted a recipe for tuna salad on her blog, The Feisty Foodie. Since I am almost as faithful a reader of her blog as she is of mine (her reviews of New York restaurants always make me want to pack my bags and catch a flight out to New York), I read her post and by the end really wanted some tuna salad. I finally got around to making some (I didn’t have any eggs in the fridge, so I couldn’t make any for a while), and it is definitely kick er… butt! Yummmm… this recipe is definitely a keeper! When you are making the tuna temaki, don’t put too much wasabi in it (omit the wasabi if you don’t like spicy foods). I accidentally put too much wasabi on one, which resulted in Son looking like he was crying (Okay, so his eyes were just watering 😛 ). Hehe too much even for him! 😛

So how are your summers going? I hear that some of you have pretty bad weather where you are… I hope you are managing alright! Here in SoCal, it’s not too bad. A little hot sometimes, but nothing a fan and a little AC can’t solve. Hope things are going great for you all!

Makes 12 cones.

Ingredients

• 6 sheets nori
• 3 cups sumeshi
• 2 cans of tuna, drained
• 2 hard boiled eggs, chopped
• 2 ribs of celery, chopped
• 1 tbsp pickle relish
• 1/4 tsp dried dill
• 1 tbsp dijon mustard
• 2 tbsp mayonnaise
• 6 green onions, green portion
• wasabi

Cooking Directions

1. Cook sushi rice.
2. Mix the tuna, hard boiled eggs, celery, relish, dill, mustard, and mayonnaise together. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
3. When you are rolling the temaki, put a line of wasabi on the rice before you put the ingredients down. Then roll the temaki sushi, using about 1/4 cup of tuna salad and one green onion, broken in half, as your fillings.
4. Enjoy!

The last post showed you how to make temaki sushi. This post gives you the recipe for the temaki sushi shown in the how-to post! This one is soooooo good. I didn’t think bacon, green onion and cheese would be anything really special. Quite frankly I had forgotten to get ingredients for this post and just used what was in my fridge at the time! Surprisingly, this one is amazingly good! Bacon goes with just about everything, of course, and the green onion brightened it up a bit. Add a bit of creamy cheddar cheese, and BAM! you have got an amazing temaki sushi! Believe me, you will *scream* “Yum!” when you try this one!

Makes 12 cones.

Ingredients

• 6 sheets nori
• 3 cups sumeshi
• 12 slices of bacon
• 12 sticks green onion
• 6 1 inch by 2 inch slices of cheddar cheese

Cooking Directions

1. Cook sushi rice.
2. Cook bacon in frying pan or microwave bacon, until it is as crispy as you like it. Break each slice in half.
3. Wash the green onion, cut the long green stalks off of the white bulb-like things. Discard (or pickle) the white bulbs. Break each stalk in half.
4. Quarter each slice of cheese.
5. Roll the temaki sushi, using two green onion halves, two bacon halves, and four cheese sticks as your fillings.
6. Enjoy!

I grew up with my mom making cha-shu. She would make a big batch for dinner one night and we would eat it with ramen, and then eat it in sandwiches the rest of the week. It wasn’t until I met Son that I ever heard it referred to by the Chinese name – char siu? Or something like that? The way Son says it sounds like sa-siew, so now I’m completely confused. Don’t blame me, I’m Japanese! Hehe maybe some of my Chinese readers can help me out here? Anyways, after making the beef teriyaki for the Banh Mi Sushi and being rather successful with one of my mom’s dishes, I decided to make another dish that I grew up with, and it turned out pretty good too! (Of course it wasn’t as good as mom’s… it’s never as good as mom’s!)

Now you may think I’m silly, but if you are in the mood to go see a movie, and an animated one at that, you should really go see Ratatouille. You know, the movie with the cooking rat! Hehe Son and I just got back from seeing it, and it was fantastic! Now if only I could cook like that… maybe someday! 😀

Makes 6 rolls, or 36-48 slices.

Ingredients

• 6 sheets nori
• 3 cups sumeshi
• 2 lbs boneless center cut pork loin
• 2 tbsp hoisin sauce
• 2 tbsp shoyu
• 1.5 tbsp rice wine (NOT rice vinegar!)
• 2.5 tbsp sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp ketchup
• 1/5 tbsp minced garlic
• 1 avocado
• mayonnaise
• seasoning salt

Cooking Directions

1. Remove most of the fat and gristle from pork loin and discard.
2. Cut meat with grain into strips about 3 inches thick.
3. Combine hoisin sauce, shoyu, rice wine, sugar, salt, ketchup and garlic in a bowl.
4. Add meat. Coat well.
5. Marinate at least 4 hours, or overnight
6. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.
7. Arrange the pork on a rack (I used a cookie cooling rack) in a roasting pan (or on a cookie sheet). If you want to reduce the mess, line the cookie sheet with foil and also put foil on the rack, using a knife to cut through the foil where the openings in the rack are so the juices and marinade can drip through onto the pan. It’s not guaranteed to be entirely mess free, but it should reduce the mess significantly.
8. Roast for 45 minutes or until the meat is cooked through and the outside is brown.
9. Cook sushi rice.
10. Slice a piece of the cooked meat into strips, about 1 inch thick.
11. Cut the avocado in half, discard the pit, slice into thin slices while still in the tough skin, then discard the skin.
12. Roll the sushi, using one cha-shu stick, a few avocado sticks and mayonnaise as your fillings.
13. Sprinkle with seasoning salt. Enjoy!