Category: Sushi

Vegetarian Dashi

Even though I am by no means vegetarian, I have a tendency to make vegetarian dashi far more than the normal dashi that uses bonito flakes. I especially like this version – nice and simple to make!

Recipe from Vegetarian Sushi Secrets by Marisa Baggett, out today!

Ingredients

3 cups (750 ml) cool water
2 oz (50 g) dried shiitake mushrooms
One 2×2-in 5×5-cm piece kombu kelp

Cooking Directions

Cover the dried shiitake mushrooms with the water and allow to soak for 5 minutes. Drain the mushrooms, reserving 2 1/2 cups (625 ml) of the soaking water.
Wipe the kombu on both sides with a damp cloth. Bring the reserved shiitake water to a boil in a saucepan. Remove from heat and add the kombu and soaked mushrooms.
Stir all ingredients, and then allow to sit for 5 minutes. Strain away mushrooms and kombu to obtain the dashi liquid.

I received a copy of this cookbook for free, as well as provided a foreword for the cookbook. Links in this post may be affiliate links.

Maki Recipes

Every few months, Son and I go out to eat KBBQ with some of his old coworkers. Charred meat, a huge variety of banchan, your clothes smelling like KBBQ all the way home… what’s not to love? Unless, of course, you’re the one vegetarian of the group, who always gets stuck in the corner, marinating in meat smoke while noshing on whatever meatless dishes the restaurant happens to serve.

To make up for that, every time we have a potluck, I try to make some hearty, delicious meatless dishes that our token vegetarian can enjoy. Especially when he’s the one hosting – it just seems so wrong to bring a meaty dish to a vegetarian’s house.

One of the sushi recipes that I make most often for potlucks and at home is my Spicy Shrimp Inari. It’s simple and delicious… and, as it turns out, seriously easy to convert to vegetarian! Now, this new mushroom inari recipe, along with my Vegan Sushi, are my go-to recipes when I know vegetarians or vegans will be present. Both are easy to make, and both are delicious enough that even serious carnivores love them!

Spicy Mushroom Inari

Ingredients

1 package aburaage (inari pouches)
3 cups sumeshi
1 whole portabello mushroom, or a few shiitake mushrooms
1 tbsp sesame oil
1/4 cup mayonnaise (use vegan mayo to make these vegan)
1 tbsp Sriracha sauce
1 tbsp black sesame seeds

Cooking Directions

Cook sushi rice.
Slice the mushrooms into long slices, then cut each slice in half if needed.
Sauté the mushroom slices in the sesame oil until softened and brown.
Prepare the inari pouches according to the directions on the package. (Some require no preparation, while some say you should boil the pouch of inari for a few minutes before using them.)
Mix the mayonnaise and Sriracha sauce until well blended.
Stuff each pouch of inari with about 1/4 cup of rice.
Lay a piece of mushroom on top of each stuffed inari.
Drizzle a little spicy mayonnaise over the mushroom.
Sprinkle sesame seeds over the sauce.
Enjoy!

Other Recipes

Salmon Poke

salmon poke

A few months ago, a new restaurant opened in Redondo Beach that serves nothing but poke. We’re kind of addicted. (We like the California Roll poke the best.)

Jus' Poke

A few weeks ago, Son and I went on a business trip/vacation to Europe, which was tons of fun, exhausting, and left us craving Asian food like crazy. (Check out my Instagram for lots of pictures from the trip, and keep an eye on the Fridgg blog for writeups about everywhere we went, as soon as Son has time to process some of the thousands of pictures he took!) (We totally have been binging on Thai, Chinese, and Japanese food since we’ve gotten back.)

Flying to Europe

A few days ago, one of the awesome people I met at Big Traveling Potluck this year blogged about ahi poke. Yummm….

And then, Saturday night, after a long day full of lots of eating, Son and I were standing in front of the fish counter in Whole Foods at closing time, trying to figure out what I should cook for the next week. “Figure out what you want,” I told Son with a yawn, as I gently pushed him towards the big slabs of fish.

“Hmmm, maybe salmon…” he hemmed and hawed.

“All the salmon is sashimi grade,” offered the man behind the counter, with a smile. “You could make poke…”

“Ooooh!” Son and I both perked up at the idea. “We could get a couple of pounds of salmon, and make half into poke, and cook the other half…”

So we bought the fish, and the next day, used Samantha’s ahi poke recipe (substituting the salmon for the ahi tuna, of course), and made half of the salmon into poke. And then made the other half of the salmon into poke, because it was too delicious not to. 😀

salmon poke

Recipe slightly adapted from Samantha of Little Ferraro Kitchen

Recipe

Ingredients

1 lb sashimi-grade salmon, cut into cubes
3 tbsp shoyu
2 stalks of green onion, chopped
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 tbsp sesame seeds
1 tsp sea salt (optional – Son thought it was a little too salty, but I liked it with the sea salt, so add to taste)

Cooking Directions

Mix all ingredients in a large bowl and refrigerate until ready to serve.
Enjoy!

Other Recipes

Pumpkin Pie Wontons with Maple Whipped Cream

Post author By Allison
Post date November 7, 2012
5 Comments on Pumpkin Pie Wontons with Maple Whipped Cream

Now that we’ve launched Fridgg, I’m a little more conscious of being on top of holidays before they happen (unlike how I always used to post holiday recipes a week or so after the fact!) For example, I got the Halloween sushi post up a couple of days before Halloween, and here I am with a Thanksgiving post a whole two weeks before Thanksgiving (so long as you don’t count the Canadians)!

Of course, I can’t take all the credit for having this one posted early. Last weekend there was a Food Bloggers Los Angeles meeting (they have one every month) at Andrew Wilder’s house, and we were all asked to bring a Thanksgiving dish, so I had no choice but to come up with something!

I considered bringing sushi, but decided I didn’t want to bring an experimental roll that might not have been any good (I didn’t have time to test out any roll ideas before the day of the meeting). I thought about bringing the pie I always make for my family’s Thanksgiving gatherings, but figured there would probably be plenty of other people bringing pies.

But I got stuck on the idea of a pie-based dessert. Since I wanted this to go on Sushi Day, I wanted something somewhat Asian. Because obviously, if you put it in a wonton, that makes it Asian.

And, as we all know, I like to put stuff (like cheese and jalapeños, or arctic char and cream cheese) in wontons.

Thus, pumpkin pie wontons! I daresay this is my best wonton idea yet. They taste like little, light, pumpkin hand-pies. And the maple whipped cream (which was Son’s idea) really pushed them over the top.

In the last week I’ve made these three times: for a housewarming party with Son’s coworkers, for the FBLA meeting, and for my physical therapist’s office. Each time, they disappeared quickly! Although there is deep-frying involved, I still think these are easier to make than a pie (yep, I’m still intimidated by pie crusts, even though I make one every year!)

And now that I’ve made these, I really want to try other pie fillings in wontons… perhaps apple? What sorts of pie fillings do you think would work well in a wonton?

The pumpkin pie filling is from the Thanksgiving Twofer Pie recipe in Baking From My Home To Yours by Dorie Greenspan.

I got the whipped cream recipe from Back to Her Roots.

Recipe

Ingredients

1 cup pumpkin puree
2/3 cup heavy whipping cream
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1/2 tsp vanilla or 1/2 vanilla bean
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp rum (I use walnut liqueur)
1 package wonton wrappers (about 60 wrappers)
cooking oil
1 cup heavy whipping cream
2/3 cup powdered sugar
1/2 tsp maple flavoring

Cooking Directions

Mix the pumpkin puree, 2/3 cup heavy whipping cream, brown sugar, egg, egg yolk, vanilla, cinnamon, ginger, salt, and rum in a mixing bowl.
Place one wonton on your clean working surface with one corner pointing towards you, and use your finger dipped in water to wet all four edges.
Place a small scoop of the pumpkin pie filling in the middle of the wrapper.
Bring the top and bottom corners of the wonton wrapper together, and then seal the edges, pressing firmly to make sure all the edges seal well (you don’t want the filling leaking out while you fry them).
Repeat with the remaining wonton wrappers and pumpkin pie filling, until you run out of one or the other.
Pour about 2 inches of cooking oil into a cooking pot or wok, and heat it on high.
Fry the wontons until golden brown on each side (beware, they fry quickly, so keep an eye on them!), then transfer to a wire rack to cool. (Make sure you place paper towels beneath the rack to catch the dripping oil.)
To make the maple whipped cream: Put 1 cup of heavy whipping cream, powdered sugar, and maple flavoring in a medium-sized jar. Seal jar well, then shake like crazy for a few minutes, until you have whipped cream. (Stop and check every now and then to make sure you don’t over-whip it and get butter!)
Serve wontons with dollops of whipped cream immediately (wontons will get soggy if you let them sit for too long, but they’ll still be delicious!).
Enjoy!
Put any leftovers in the fridge, and reheat using a toaster oven.
If you have leftover wonton wrappers, you can cut them into strips and fry them for chinese chicken salad, or fry them and top with powdered sugar for a light, delicious dessert. If you have leftover pumpkin pie filling, you can use it for this pumpkin pie parfait.

Nigiri Recipes Sushi

Spooky Halloween Sushi

I recently realized that in all the six years that Sushi Day has been around, I’ve never once done a single Halloween post.

Not a single one!

Obviously, that needed to change.

I wanted to do something with black and orange fillings, so first I had to find myself some black rice. All I could find at the grocery store was wild rice (which likely wouldn’t work too well for sushi), so I ordered a bag of Chinese black rice from Amazon.

Not only do I love uni and ikura, but they’re also perfect for Halloween – both orange-colored, uni can pass for a slug or a tongue, and ikura kind of looks like eyeballs. Combine that with the black rice (which in the right light, looks just like a mass of little black bugs!) and you’ve got some perfectly creepy Halloween sushi.

I love playing around with the Rice Cube I got earlier this year (Disclaimer: the Rice Cube was a gift, and all Amazon links in this post are affiliate links), plus it’s SO easy to make sushi cubes with it, so I decided to use that to play around for this year’s Halloween sushi.

Check out our Halloween tag on Fridgg for more fun and spooky Halloween treats!

Recipe

Ingredients

2 cups sumeshi, made with Chinese black rice
1 tray uni
1/4 cup ikura
1 tsp paprika
1 tbsp black sesame seeds

Cooking Directions

Use a Rice Cube to form the sumeshi into squares (or use your hands, dampened with water, to form the sumeshi into balls. Or you can use plastic wrap, or a small mold). You can layer the rice with ikura, if you’d like
Top your cube or ball of rice with one lobe of uni (or two if they’re small) or a small scoop of ikura.
Sprinkle with a little paprika and black sesame seeds, if desired.
Enjoy!

Nigiri Recipes

Uni Nigiri Cubes

uni rice cube

When I first tried uni, at a little sushi restaurant in Honolulu in the summer of 2008, I was not a fan. Something about the texture, the saltiness, and how exotic it seems just put me off. For the next three years, I was convinced that I just plain didn’t like uni.

In spring of 2011, I was at a fellow food blogger’s house, filming some sustainable sushi videos for a friend with a couple of other friends of mine who are also food bloggers. Among the types of seafood we had to work with was some fresh golden uni.

Since this was my first time meeting Rachael and Greg, and at the time I had only met Cathy and Martin once… I sure as heck wasn’t about to admit that I, a sushi blogger, didn’t like uni. Especially since everyone else was raving about it so much.

So I tried the uni temarizushi that Rachael made… and they were actually pretty good. Then I ventured to try the fresh uni straight from the tray… suffice to say that since then, I’ve become a full-on uni lover.

Lucky for me, uni is pretty sustainable, not to mention good for you as well (and also an aphrodisiac… oh la la! ~_^)

If you want to know more about uni, why not listen to the uni episode of my Miso Hungry Podcast?

uni

A few weeks ago, Rachael gave me a cool little kitchen toy called a Rice Cube. (Disclaimer: I got this as a gift, and Rice Cube also donated several Rice Cubes for us to give away on our podcast.) So when I bought a tray of uni for the uni episode, I wanted to find a way to use the rice cube with it.

I tried compressing the uni into a cube with the rice… but that just looked ugly (though still delicious). So instead I made a cube with the sushi rice, laid a lobe of uni over it, then sprinkled it with paprika and topped it with a sliver of green onion. I actually liked this better than normal nigiri, because not only was it ridiculously easy to make, the ratio of rice to uni was also perfect.

If you want a Rice Cube for yourself, you can buy one through their campaign to fight childhood obesity on IndieGoGo at a discount and have the proceeds go towards fighting childhood obesity. OR… you can head over to the Tako Episode of my podcast, where we’re giving away three of them!

uni rice cube

Recipe
Nutrition Info

Ingredients

2 cups sumeshi
1 tray uni
1 tsp paprika
4 stalks of green onion, white part discarded

Cooking Directions

Use a Rice Cube to form the sumeshi into squares (or use your hands, dampened with water, to form the sumeshi into balls. Or you can use plastic wrap, or a small mold)
Top your cube or ball of rice with one lobe of uni (or two if they’re small).
Sprinkle with a little paprika, and top with a sliver of green onion.
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.

Maki Recipes

Vegan Sushi

Vegetarian sushi

I love to cook for others. Like, really, really love making sushi for other people.

In a perfect world, I’d be allowed to experiment and have as much freedom coming up with new rolls as I do here on Sushi Day. But this isn’t a perfect world, and not everyone will eat all the random rolls I put together (and, to be honest, not everything I attempt comes out well…). And I’m okay with that.

These days, there are a lot of things you have to take into account when making sushi for other people, like if you’re going to a potluck. While my Spicy Shrimp Inari is always a crowd pleaser, you know there are always a few picky eaters: “I don’t eat seafood… at all.” (Hence my Man Sushi… trust me, that’ll convince any meat eater that sushi’s actually delicious!)

Then there are those with allergies – gluten-free? Just stay away from tempura. (And bring some wheat-free tamari soy sauce… did you know that most normal soy sauce actually has wheat products in it?) Dairy-free? Okay, no rolls with cream-cheese.

Sushi for the potluck

And, of course, you have those with other dietary restrictions, like vegetarians and vegans. At the most recent potluck I went to, I knew we’d have a few vegetarian/vegan attendees. So in addition to the other sushi dishes that I brought, I decided to come up with a vegetarian roll.

Obviously, I was going to use primarily vegetables in the roll. I considered using tofu, but decided against it since I didn’t think there would be a quick, easy way to make tofu taste good in sushi. (I needed something that wouldn’t be too time-consuming, since I was making four dishes that morning for the potluck.) I also couldn’t resort to tempura-frying the veggies, since tempura isn’t vegan – the batter uses egg. For the same reason, no mayonnaise is allowed either.

But it had to be a delicious, somehow interesting roll. It just wouldn’t be right to make delicious rolls for my meat-eating friends, and then bring a boring, “blah” roll for my vegan friends. So I had to come up with something so good even the meat-eaters would love it.

“Asparagus… roasted. Obviously. I love roasted asparagus.”

“Onions… sauteed? Nah, I want a texture contrast. How about fried? Yeah, I’ll need to heat up oil to fry the Arctic Char and Cream Cheese Wontons, so I can just fry up a bunch of thinly-sliced onions before I start the wontons.”

“What else… what would go well with asparagus and onions? Hm. How about carrots? Yeah, carrots would be good. But I don’t want to just roast them. I’m already roasting the asparagus; another plain roasted vegetable would be boring. Oooh, what if I glaze them with a little maple syrup? That would add a nice sweetness that should round out the roll.”

So how did it turn out? According to my veg(etari)an (as well as my omnivorous) friends, this fish-less, meat-less roll was a grand success. So much so, that it has definitely earned a place in my regular potluck menu. ^_^

Vegetarian sushi

Recipe

Ingredients

6 sheets nori
3 cups sumeshi
1 bunch asparagus, with ends chopped off
1 bunch of carrots, sliced into 1/2-inch sticks
1 1/2 tbsp olive oil, divided
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp maple syrup
1 onion, thinly sliced
canola oil, for frying

Cooking Directions

Cook sushi rice.
Preheat oven to 400° F
Toss the asparagus with 1 tbsp olive oil and the salt. Spread out on a baking sheet.
Toss the carrot sticks with the maple syrup and remaining olive oil. Spread out on a separate baking sheet.
Roast the asparagus and carrots until the asparagus starts to brown, about 1 hour.
Deep fry the onion slices in the canola oil until crispy. Drain on paper towels; sprinkle with salt.
Roll the sushi, using the roasted asparagus, maple-roasted carrots, and fried onions for your fillings.
Enjoy!

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:

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.
Congratulations to Lara, 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, and you can use the code BWELA20 to get 20% off.

Sushi!

Recipe

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

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.
Coat the sliced vegetables in flour, then in the tempura batter, and tempura-fry 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, using the beef teriyaki, tempura vegetables, and spicy mayonnaise for your fillings.
Enjoy!

Other Recipes

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

Post author By Allison
Post date December 13, 2010
4 Comments on 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.

Recipe
Nutrition Info

Ingredients

sashimi-grade mackerel
ginger root
green onion
shoyu

Cooking Directions

Thinly slice the mackerel.
Peel the ginger, then chop into short, thin sticks.
Slice the green onion.
Sprinkle the ginger and green onion over the mackerel, and serve with shoyu.
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.