daring cooks challenge | sushi

the november 2009 daring cooks challenge was brought to you by audax of audax artifex and rose of the bite me kitchen. they chose sushi as the challenge.

once again i was super excited about this month's sushi challenge. i love japanese cuisine!! but i certainly didn't want to make a boring avocado or cucumber roll. so i did a bit of research and looked to some of the vegan japanese restaurants in town for inspiration. below is the menu i settled on:

dragon sushi roll (per the requirements of the challenge)

nigiri

seaweed salad

tempura shitake mushrooms with wasabi mayo

soy sauce marinated mountain potato with shiso leaf

cavi-art tobiko

vegan spam musubi

first things first....getting all my ingredients together. luckily steve and i have made sushi many times before, so i already had the basics in stock: rice vinegar, rolling mat, nori sheets....etc. for the tobiko i made a quick stop at locali for some vegan caviar. i really wanted to pick up a jar of their red cavi-art, but sadly they only had a the black kind available. the girl at the counter informed me that they would most likely not be restocking the other varieties. bummer....i really love this stuff.

for the other ingredients steve and i headed out to a japanese market. we happened to be on the west side so we made a stop at mitsuwa marketplace and picked up some mountain potato, shitake mushrooms, japanese cucumbers, shiso leaves, seaweed salad and scallions. then back to the house we went to get started on our sushi.

first the sushi rice was prepared with some rice vinegar, sugar and salt.


next my nigiri components were laid out....starting at the top left hand and moving clockwise: shitake mushrooms, japanese mountain potato and shiso leaves, japanese cucumber, scallions, wasabi mayo, roasted nori and sesame seed seasoning, wasabi, vegan ham, seaweed salad and cavi-art caviar.



we roasted the nori sheets, fried the "ham" in some grapeseed oil, marinated the mountain potato in soy sauce and tempura fried the shitake mushrooms. we then assembled the nigiri pieces:

next we moved on to the dragon roll. the bbq unagi (eel) in your typical dragon or caterpillar roll was replaced with bbq marinated tofu which was cut into strips and tempura fried right before rolling. the ingredients from left to right: japanese cucumber, bbq marinated tofu, avocado slices and cavi-art caviar.



sadly the avocado was not as ripe as i would have liked it to be, which made rolling and cutting it a bit difficult. this however didn't take anything away from the overall results....it was GOOD!!! had it not been eaten so quickly i might have been able to get some shots of the inside.



overall i'd say the results were great. i especially liked the shitake mushroom tempura nigiri and the mountain potato marinated in soy sauce which was complimented well by the shiso leaf. can't wait to try out different varieties and get creative with some asian ingredients. the possibilities are endless...

6.2.09 | fresh & easy sesame shitake noodle salad

i absolutely hate super markets!! i've certainly been spoiled by the affordability of trader joe's, the selection at whole foods and the variety of produce at so-cal farmer's markets. on the rare occasion that i make my way into a major supermarket i'm reminded of how over processed and overpriced everything is....especially all vegetarian products which usually cost an arm and a leg. but sadly, trader joe's doesn't carry everything and sometimes all natural, organic or raw from whole foods simply isn't in the budget.....in comes fresh & easy. the concept of fresh & easy markets is high-quality products at affordable prices. basically select major food brands and items found at most grocery stores at great discounts. they also have their own brand of food products, but i find it's not as reliable as trader joe's. still i'm glad to have a fresh & easy in my neighborhood and was happy to spend my tuesday afternoon perusing the aisles with my mom.

i picked up some pantry staples (spices, cornstarch and condiments), a couple complete noodle meals in a box that were on sale for $1.25 and i was out the door for less than $10.00...major score! of course, homemade meals from scratch are always better, tastier and certainly healthier....but you can't beat 6 servings of noodles for $1.25!! I'm talkin vegan, complete "gourmet" dishes with no artificial preservatives, flavors or colors...not cup-a-noodle! think convenience...think recession!

i decided to try the sesame shitake noodle salad for dinner and made 1/3 of the package, which yielded about 2 servings.

buckwheat soba noodle salad...a blend of sesame, shitake mushrooms, soy sauce, red chili flakes, miso and edamame.

the noodles were easy to make and delicious! the dehydrated veggies (i know i know!) were a bit tough, but i think next time i'll just leave them cooking in the sauce a bit longer. a 1/2 teaspoon of toasted sesame oil and 30 minutes in the fridge and cold soba noodle salad was ready.

you could easily use this as a base and add some tofu, chopped scallions or other fresh veggies to make it a more complete meal. the whole box would make a great and easy dish for a summer bbq.

now for the nutritional breakdown..1 serving has 268 calories, 8g of fat (1 g of saturated fat), no cholesterol, 665mg of sodium, 43g of carbs (3.5g of sugar, 3.5g of fiber), 7g of protein. I reduced the sesame oil to less than half of what the instructions called for which probably cut a significant amount of the listed fat from the dish, but didn't compromise on taste.

5.23.09 | sushi night

after a nice lunch in echo park, Steve and I made our way to little tokyo market place to get all the goods for our japanese dinner.

baby mixed greens with miso tahini dressing (veganomicon)

because i use low-sodium miso paste, i decided to add some soy sauce to-taste and a bit of lemon juice to add depth to the dressing. it was so good and easy to make. we poured the dressing over some baby mixed greens from trader joe's, but i imagine that it would also be great as a dip with crudités.

steamed asari (manila) clams (recipe available at rasa malaysia)

i had previously made this recipe without the mirin and really enjoyed it. this time i decided to follow the recipe and was really disappointed at how sweet the broth turned out. i will definitely be sticking to just sake in the future. i find that nigori sake adds just the right amount of sweetness to compliment the savory clams.

spicy tempeh rolls (recipe available at the post punk kitchen)

i luckily already had some sushi rice and tempeh at home, so we just picked up a few ingredients and a couple of bamboo rolling mats at a japanese discount store. the seasoned rice vinegar from trader joe's worked out perfectly for the rice and didn't require adding the additional sugar the recipe called for. we chopped up our scallions into the filling and layered lots of avocado on top...yum!! We made a second roll with some bbq unagi sauce, tempeh and avocado...our version of a caterpillar roll. we didn't bother roasting the nori sheets for both rolls and they turned out just fine. in lieu of wasabi, we added chili oil to our soy sauce for dipping.

the rolls turned out surprisingly well for being our first attempt at sushi. they were a bit on the big side and had a bit too much rice...but I think that can definitely be perfected with more practice. the tempeh I had at home had flax seeds in it which i thought overpowered the other flavors, so i think the plain variety would work best. i would definitely like to play around some more with the fillings and perhaps incorporate tempura in the future....the possibilities are endless!!!