Just a quick post to ‘keep my hand in the game’, as it were.
At long last, I made fish tacos. Though they’re not close to being ‘authentic’ starting with the fish used (sole), they tasted great. I based them on this recipe I found on the web.
The toppings were just stuff I had on hand and liked. I substituted feta cheese for the cotija cheese called for.
My only regret is not having a cold cerveza to wash them down with.
Eating out at one of the local sushi restaurants is a great treat, but, when I’m strapped for cash, I make my own.
There are many rolled and shaped types of sushi but this version is one of the easiest to make and requires no special equipment or rolling skills. And nori (seaweed) is not needed.
You can serve/assemble this dish in whatever container you’ve got … a special sushi bowl, a bento box or just a pretty bowl that’s large enough to hold your rice and toppings.
Chirashi or “scattered” sushi starts with a bowl of sushi (seasoned) rice and is topped with an assortment of ingredients. Of course, you may use raw fish (dip in soy sauce before eating) or other items traditionally found in sushi rolls.
Chirashi Sushi – serves 2, 1 1/2 cups of cooked rice per person
1 cup raw sushi rice**, Calrose, Nishiki and Kokuho Rose are what I’ve tried
Cook according to package directions and then season with two to three tablespoons of seasoned rice vinegar. Each cup of raw sushi rice will give you three cups of cooked sushi rice.
** Note: This amount of rice is enough to make 4-6 sushi rolls
I decided to cut back on the rice serving size, to one cup (instead of 1 1/2), so that I could make three different sushi dishes.
Toppings
raw ahi tuna
blanched shrimp
hard boiled egg, sliced into wedges or rings
sliced avocado
sliced green onion
Condiments
wasabi
soy sauce, for the raw tuna
pickled ginger
If you can find wasabi powder, make it fresh ( 1 1/2 heaping teaspoon of wasabi powder with 1 tsp of cold water stirred in) for each sushi meal as the heat lessens as it stands. Store the powder in the freezer to keep it fresh.
Garnishes
shredded nori
masago (capelin or flying fish roe)
Ochazuke or “rice with green tea” is a great way of using up leftover cooked sushi rice, odds and ends from making sushi rolls, grilled fish and blanched fresh or pickled vegetables.
Ochazuke – serves 1
1 cup leftover cooked sushi rice (unseasoned), reheated in the microwave
1 cup of hot green tea
toppings ie furikake (rice seasoning)
If you stir your raw fish into the hot tea, it will poach quickly.
And with my third cup of sushi rice and the last of the raw ahi tuna I had thawed, I made these two traditional sushi rolls. The spicy tuna roll was topped with masago (capelin roe) while the other roll just had strips of the tuna and avocado so that the flavour of the tuna could be appreciated ‘naked’.
A few weeks ago, I asked for suggestions on my FB groups as to what to do with canned tuna. One of the most popular suggestions was a tuna noodle casserole. I finally got around to making it and wondered why I’d waited so long. Cause this is some tasty stuff, folks.
For a recipe I went with the one from the Campbells (TM) website.
I was tempted to only use one can of tuna but, since I had five cans in the pantry, I splurged. I left out the pimento, since I didn’t have any, and topped the casserole with about a cup of crispy fried onions, from my pantry, instead of breadcrumbs. I also sprinkled some sweet paprika over the top, for colour.
Review: Delicious, if a bit bland. You might want to add about a quarter teaspoon of salt and pepper to the mushroom soup/milk mixture before you add the cooked noodles and the rest of the ingredients.
I’ve been wanting to try this Hawaiian dish ever since I ran across mention of it in some readings I was doing for other Hawaiian cuisine … the classic or Spam loco moco, and Spam musubi come to mind. However, whenever I had had good quality ahi tuna on hand, I always ended up making something else. A month or two ago, I bought a one pound package of ahi tuna, individually vacuum packed in quarter pound portions. Today’s freezing cold and light snow seems a strange time to make something that’s native to Hawaii’s sun filled shores but it seemed to be perfect for me.
Some recipes use a lot of acid (lemon or lime juice) and marinate the raw tuna for a couple of hours, creating what is an essentially a ‘ceviche’ … where the fish is cooked by the acid. In this version, the pretty pink cubes of tuna are lightly dressed with the marinade and served as soon as possible. A half hour wait in the refrigerator, at most, is acceptable
Appetizer/Starter/First Course … if desired, place the tuna in a shallow bowl and eat with crunchy wonton wedges or tortilla chips
Light Lunch version Quinoa Bowl
Hawaiian Style Ahi Tuna Poke – serves 4
1 pound sashimi/sushi grade ahi tuna, cut into 1/2-3/4 inch cubes
3-4 green onion tops, thinly sliced, reserve some for garnish
Dressing
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 tsp rice vinegar
1 tsp honey
1/2 tbsp toasted sesame seed oil
1/2-3/4 tsp red pepper flakes, crushed (adjust the amount to your preference)
1/2 tsp sesame seeds (black, white or mixed), plus more for garnish
Optional
1 tbsp dry wakame seaweed, soaked in boiling water until rehydrated (~15 min), drained and thinly sliced
1 tbsp dry hijiki seaweed, soaked in boiling water until rehydrated (~15 min), drained
togarashi (dry Japanese chile pepper mixture) or furikake (Japanese sushi rice seasoning)
Combine the dressing ingredients in a small bowl or measuring cup. Whisk together. Taste and adjust the sweet/salt/tang level.
Place the tuna and green onions in a medium sized bowl. If using seaweed, add at this point.
Spoon the dressing over the top and toss gently. Divide among serving dishes.
For a pretty appetizer, spoon the tuna into champagne coupe glasses. Sprinkle the garnishes over the top … sesame seeds, more sliced green onion, togarashi etc.
For a light meal, place a half cup of cooked quinoa (or rice) in a bowl and top with the dressed tuna. Garnish.
Repurposing leftover Sriracha and wasabi mayonnaise can be a challenge, but the results are sometimes pretty amazing.
Sriracha Mayonnaise – Salmon fillet brushed with mayonnaise, pan-seared in a hot cast iron frying pan on the stove for 3-4 minutes, and then finished in a 425 deg F oven. A brief (1-2 minutes) time under the broiler will give the top a perfect finish. Serve the salmon with your favourite rice dish and a green salad.
Wasabi Mayonnaise … Dip for Oven Baked Parmesan Potato Wedges
Oven Baked Parmesan Potato Wedges – serves 4
4 medium potatoes, skin on, cut into 8 wedges, rinsed and dried
2 tbsp EVOO (extra virgin olive oil)
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp onion powder
Preheat oven to 425 deg Fahrenheit.
In a large bowl, toss the potato wedges with the rest of the ingredients. Spread the coated potatoes out in a single layer on a parchment lined baking sheet and bake for 30-40 min, or until the potatoes are tender.
Serve with your favourite mayonnaise dip ie wasabi mayonnaise
ETA (08/23/2017) : Some additional notes on onigiri ideas added to bottom of post.
In these last couple of weeks, before school starts again, I’ve been in a frenzy of cooking.
I broke open the one kilo bag of frozen raw shrimp, from Costco, and made two different pasta dishes (I’ll post a picture of the second one soon) with home made semolina pasta. Sales on fresh fruit meant that I finally made another batch of raspberry curd so I could take some pictures. It’s hard to believe the last time I made raspberry curd was before I owned a camera. I made red chile pulled pork for tamales … and then changed my mind and made a vegetarian filling instead and froze away the rest of the pork.
The nigiri in this post had been planned for on the same weekend that I did the last bbq. In fact, I was going to grill a foil wrapped package of teriyaki basted salmon belly meat on the grill, for the onigiri, at the same time. And then I forgot the salmon in the fridge. So I had to bake it off in the oven. Instead of shaping the onigiri into the most commonly seen triangles, I made rice balls or ‘bombs’.
Bakudan Onigiri Platter
Two different ways of serving the rice balls
Instead of stuffing the salmon, or other seasoning, in the middle of the balls, it was stirred into half of the hot rice. Wrapping the rice balls in a half sheet of nori keeps it moist longer. For including in your bento/lunch bag, wrap the rice ball up tightly in food/saran wrap. Biting into the neat package can be a wonderful surprise if you’ve made an assortment.
And for something even simpler, a couple of tablespoons of furikake (rice seasoning or topping) were stirring into the other half of the rice.
Making the Rice Balls:
1 cup of raw sushi rice, cooked with 1/2 tsp of salt
6-8 half sheets of nori
90-100 gm cooked salmon, flaked for ver. 1
2 large shiso leaves, julienned for ver. 1
2 tbsp furikake (rice seasoning) for ver. 2
Garnishes (optional)
tobiko (fish roe)
bonito flakes, moistened with some soy sauce
The cooked rice was divided into two halves and the salmon (and julienned shiso leaves) and furikake were stirred into each respective portion. The salmon portion was divided into 4 larger rice balls as the salmon added a lot of bulk, while the furikake half only made 3 somewhat smaller rice balls.
Various Types of Onigiri/Omosubi
1. Filled onigiri
fish – salmon (sake), tuna, shaved bonito moistened with soy sauce (okaka), shrimp
umeboshi (pickled plums)
tempura shrimp
tsukudani style kombu (sheets cooked with soy sauce and mirin until tender, shredded and tucked into rice ball)
meat – Japanese friend chicken (karaage) or regular friend chicken ***
miso glazed baked eggplant
fish roe – tobiko (flying fish), tarako (salted sac of cod roe) and mentaiko (spicy sac of cod roe), ikura salmon
*** very perishable, transport refrigerated or on ice packs
2. Mixed rice
sushi and brown rice
3. Seasoned
a) Stir the flavourings into the rice after it is cooked
furikake (nori seaweed and egg, ume (pickled plum), shiso, shrimp, and dried fish)
shredded baked, fried or smoked fish
veggies ie sauteed onion, shaved carrot, edamame, green onion
sesame seeds
pickled ginger
b) Cook along with the rice
julienned gobo (Japanese root vegetable)
peas
hijiki (Japanese dried seaweed)
julienned carrot
dashi kombu/soy sauce/sake/sugar
4. Shaped
triangular (traditional)
bakudan (bomb)
hockey puck – dimple and fill then serve filling side up
cylinder shape or tawara (bale of hay)
5. Grilled (Yaki) – brushed and grilled ** Usually NOT filled
soy sauce
miso butter
6. Wrapped
nori is traditional
takana mustard greens
ooba leaf
tororo kombu kelp
salted lettuce
salted green shiso
parcooked bacon and then grilled
7. Coating
furikake
sesame seeds or salted sesame seeds (black is more striking)
ground shiso leaves
8. Onigirazu
When cooking for one, you end up with a lot of leftovers especially if, like me, you make big pots of some dishes. When my freezer fills up to a certain point, I stop cooking and start putting together the odds and ends and come up with meals.
I try not to have too many desserts in my freezer, cause I snack when I’m bored, so I give away as much as I can of the more successful results. But this means I get stuck with some things that aren’t suitable for gifting. Like a tray of peach crumble bars that were mostly crumble and very little peach. A while back, I bought a clamshell of mostly bruised and tasteless peaches that I had to throw away. So I ended up with a lot less fruit than I needed … which I didn’t realize until I was in the middle of baking with nothing else to add in to make up the shortage. A bit of apricot jam (ran out of ice cream) is making the bars a bit more palatable, at least.
Right now, I’m adding soup as often as I can to my meals. Biscuits or bread are a good filler.
Of course, I DO make new dishes. I snagged a double package of sausage filled tortellini on sale and cooked one up in a blush sauce. On its own, the pasta dish isn’t very filling, and I didn’t have any greens for salad in the house, so I served it with a savoury plate of polenta.
The rest of the polenta was patted out into a buttered 8″ by 8″ glass dish and refrigerated, prior to being fried up as a base for a jarred spaghetti-pesto sauce.
Chicken drumsticks are often found on sale. A bit of Italian seasoning sprinkled on top and unattended baking time and you’ve got the start of a great meal.
A bit of barbecue sauce and a different starch, and you’ve got a new meal.
Things get a bit tight just before payday or in the case of supply teachers, with no paycheques for 3 months, so a tuna macaroni salad with pasta and canned tuna bought on sale is filling and tasty too. I’d usually throw some diced celery into my salad but in this case, diced raw carrots made for a nice, crunchy bite and a bit of colour too.
Whenever I have coleslaw in the house, I’m tempted to make okonomiyaki, a Japanese pancake. Another inexpensive and filling dish.
I’m bored and have nothing much to do these days except cook little throwaway dishes.
While visiting the city market on Sunday morning, I stopped to chat with the fish monger. He’s the closest source of “sashimi grade” ahi (yellow fin) tuna I have that I can buy before the sushi restaurants in town snap it all up.
I bought a small piece of vacuum packed tuna and made 3 kinds of sushi with it … one hosomaki (thin maki rolls with a single filling), 2 nigiri sushi and 2 gunkan (battleship) sushi.
I made the mistake of buying a package of 200 half nori sheets, so my maki rolls have been sloppy when I tried to stuff them with the usual 2 or 3 fillings I use. For a single ingredient, like tuna, tempura shrimp, a couple of very thin or one thick asparagus spear, the nori sheets are just fine. If you ever do this, you CAN slightly overlap the 2 half sheets and get more filling inside, but I haven’t yet. Maybe tomorrow.
Hosomaki – one inch diameter roll cut into 6-8 pieces
Nigiri sushi – an oval (~5 cm) of sushi rice, smeared with a bit of wasabi paste and covered with topping of raw fish, sweet Japanese omelet etc.
Not a great job of slicing the tuna but passable.
Gunkan sushi – 3-4 cm tall strip of nori wrapped around an oval (~5 cm) of sushi rice and topped with a loose filling like spicy tuna
Home made wasabi – enough for 1 or 2 people depending on how much they like their wasabi
1 heaping tsp wasabi powder**
1 tsp very cold water
In a small bowl, stir the two ingredients together with a single chopstick, about 10-15 min before you want to use your wasabi. Cover the bowl tightly with a piece of plastic wrap and refrigerate. Don’t make more wasabi than you’ll use as the hotness levels decreases dramatically with time.
** Your wasabi powder should be a pale green colour and in a sealed bag, preferably vacuum sealed. Once you open your package, store the rest in an small air tight container in the freezer.
Seasoned Rice Wine Vinegar for Sushi Rice – makes 1/4 cup
1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
4 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
Stir until sugar and salt is dissolved and store in a small tightly sealed bottle in the fridge. Use 1 1/-2 tbsp per 1 cup sushi rice that’s been cooked with 1 1/3 cups of water.
So much for my ‘break’. But I’ve been having a lot of fun and couldn’t resist sharing some pictures.
Taking a recipe and re-thinking some elements to come up with something new and exciting is important for the daily cook. And those of us on a budget who can’t run out and buy exotic or expensive ingredients.
So, adding beet puree (only 2 tbsp to a 2 egg pasta recipe) to a basic pasta recipe and coming up with a very pretty pink pasta doesn’t take a lot of money, just some imagination, or google-fu in case your imagination is as limited as mine.
Making the Beet Pasta
Dressing the resulting pasta is another fun pastime.
Shrimp Scampi … a very romantic shrimp supper for two
Browned Butter and Sage … a more modest meatless pasta dish with a generous grating of Grana Padano cheese
No changes in this dish from the basic recipe I posted before, but the pictures are MUCH nicer.
I haven’t made these onigiri (Japanese rice patties) in ages. You can leave them plain or fill them with anything from the classic umeboshi which are a type of pickled ‘plums’, dried bonito flakes moistened with soy sauce or a very Western tuna salad. The onigiri may also be eaten as is or grilled, basted with soy sauce and then grilled again briefly. Wrapping a strip of nori around the rice patty keeps your fingers clean, but you’ll want to wait til the last minute so the seaweed stays nice and crispy.
I learned a fun way to shape/pack sushi rice into a round ball. Simply take 2 small round bottomed bowls, rinse them with water so the rice doesn’t stick, add your rice to the bottom bowl, put the other bowl on top and SHAKE back and forth for a minute or so.
Crack open the ball of rice on a moistened sheet of food wrap over which you’ve sprinkled some salt, and add your filling. Tighten the plastic wrap around the ball and filling and squeeze it tightly, then form into a triangle shape.
Plain Onigiri – wrap a strip of nori around the patty before eating
Yaki Onigiri – I like to add a bit of wasabi to the onigiri before wrapping the nori around it and eating.
Chocolate Crinkle Cookies become cookie cups … I used 3-4 tbsp to make balls which were placed into muffin tins sprayed with cooking spray. The cookies and cups were baked together for 15-16 min at 350 deg F and then I used the bottom of a shot glass to press down the cookie in the muffin tins to make a ‘cup’. The cups were allowed to cool for 5 minutes before being removed from the muffin tins and transferred to the cooling rack to cool completely.
I’ll fill the cups and share pictures soon.
I thought I’d share the recipes for these two dishes from my Christmas eve day menu, in case anyone is interested in making them.
Fasole Batuta/Mashed White Bean Dip
Fasole Batuta/Mashed White Bean Dip
2 cups cooked white beans (cannellini, Great Northern or navy beans)
1/4 cup cooking liquid from beans or water
3/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp ground black pepper
1/4 cup finely diced white onion and 1 finely minced garlic, sauteed in 1 tsp vegetable or olive oil until tender and lightly browned**
**NOTE: You can use raw onion and garlic but the texture of the dip will be smoother and the taste milder if you saute them first.
In a food processor combine the above and puree until smooth. Scrape down the sides a couple of time, taste for additional seasoning and liquid. If making with warm beans and liquid, remember the dip will thicken as it cools so you may want to add a splash more water.
Optional Garnish: 1/4 cup finely diced white onion sauteed slowly in 2 tbsp vegetable oil until golden brown in a small frying pan over medium heat. Remove the onion to a small bowl and add 1/4 tsp Hungarian paprika to the oil. Cook for a minute or so to toast the paprika. Form a shallow circle in the middle of your bowl of bean dip with the back of a large soup spoon. Spoon the paprika flavoured oil into the circle and sprinkle the browned onion over the top. Serve with crackers, pita bread wedges, warm buns or vegetable sticks.
Bacalao/Salt Cod Cakes
Bacalao/Salt Cod Cakes – makes 12 logs or patties
8 oz/ 225 g salt cod cut into 3-4 inch portions
2 medium/large potatoes, peeled and cubed
2 tsp vegtable oil
1 medium onion, finely diced
1/2 tsp each salt and ground black pepper
1 /2 tsp dried thyme leaves
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
2-3 eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup all purpose flour, divided
1 cup dried, plain breadcrumbs
Vegetable oil for frying
The night before, soak the cod in a large bowl of cold water replacing the water a couple of times. Keep refrigerated. Taste a bit of the cod after 12 hrs and if it’s too salty, continue soaking. Otherwise, drain the cod, flake or coarsely chop and refrigerate until needed.
In a small frying pan, saute the onion and garlic in the vegetable oil until translucent and lightly browned. Transfer the onion and garlic to a plate covered with a doubled piece of paper towel to drain off the excess oil.
Place cubed potatoes in a saucepan filled with salted water, bring to a boil, cover and cook for 10-15 minutes or until the potatoes are fork tender. Drain the potatoes, return the saucepan back to the heat over medium heat and cook, stirring for 1 minute, to help dry out the potatoes.
Transfer the potatoes to a large bowl and mash. Add flaked cod, sauteed onion and garlic, thyme, salt and pepper and 1/2 cup of the flour and stir well to combine.
Using 1/4 cup portions, form into 3 inch long logs or 3 inch diameter and 1 inch tall patties.
Set up a crumbing station with flour, beaten eggs and bread crumbs in 3 separate shallow bowls. Coat the logs or patties and set aside on a clean, dry plate while heating the vegetable oil to 350 deg F in a 9-10 inch cast iron skillet for shallow frying. You’ll want the oil to be about 1 inch deep.
Fry the logs/patties, turning once, until golden, 4 to 5 minutes on each side. Drain on paper towels.
Serve with tartar sauce or ketchup, whatever you prefer.
Cooking is Fun ... Really!! 