Sushi Undone

If you have access to sashimi-grade fish, making sushi is a snap. (Sashimi-grade fish is suitable to eat raw. NEVER consume raw fish unless it is sashimi-grade fish and you’re getting it from a reputable fishmonger or grocer.)* Short-grain brown rice and seaweed are available even in most mainstream stores, and nearly every American has soy sauce in her pantry nowadays. And I’ll let you in on a wasabi secret: the stuff we buy here is horseradish that’s been finely ground and dyed green. I just haul out my jar of horseradish whenever I want wasabi.

And if you don’t have a rolling mat to make your sushi — or you’re not particularly gifted at rolling — don’t despair! I often lay out my ingredients rather than roll them; sometimes my seaweed is no longer supple enough to roll (once you’ve opened a fresh package of nori, leftover sheets tend to get brittle and crack easily), sometimes I’m feeling fumble-fingered, sometimes I just want something a little different. That’s when I make sushi undone. All you have to do is arrange the ingredients on a plate — no rolling required. In this case, I had avocado, purple sticky rice, two kinds of fish, and fish eggs. That’s it. Can’t get any simpler than that. Or any tastier!

Sushi Undone

Cooked sticky rice (I adore Thai purple sticky rice, but short-grain brown rice works just as well and is much easier to find)
Sashimi-grade fish (here I’ve included my favorites: salmon and white tuna), sliced into strips
Sliced or chopped avocado
Sheets of nori, left whole or sliced or crumbled
Fish eggs (optional; my favorite is the bright orange and incredibly tiny smelt roe)

Spoon some cooked rice onto a plate and top with fish and avocado. Tuck in or sprinkle on some sliced/crushed nori and spoon on some fish eggs. Serve with soy sauce or wheat-free tamari and a dab of wasabi or a dollop of horseradish. Talk about stress-free sushi!

Enjoy!

* My go-to place for sashimi-grade fish (and all Japanese ingredients) is Noble Fish in Clawson.

Sesame-Soy Dip with Seaweed Chips

For a while, kale chips were all the rage, but now it seems like seaweed chips have taken center stage. I love both! Especially if you make them yourself. Not only are they much less expensive that way, you can go with a dunking approach for the seaweed chips. It’s simple and fun, plus you won’t run the risk of over-roasting them by trying to season them and then re-roast them. (When you buy sheets of nori, they’ve already been roasted. Kale, on the other hand, is always available raw, so you don’t run the risk of over-roasting by re-roasting.)

Once the province of Japanese grocers, nori is getting pretty easy to find in mainstream stores — even the bigger chains now have ethnic sections scattered throughout their aisles. Just look for the Asian section to find the square-shaped, slimly-packaged sheets of nori. They’re usually sold in quantities of ten to a pack. Their primary purpose is to make sushi rolls, but they’re also ideal to use as chips. Or you can crumble them up and toss them into salads, onto scrambled eggs, or include them with fish and other seafood dishes.

Once you’ve opened a package of nori, it will start to dry out and become brittle, so if you want to use it for sushi, use it promptly! If you want to break it into chips or crumble it, you can do so long after having opened the package. Making chips out of brittle nori is a great way to use up any leftover nori you might have from having made sushi to begin with.

Sesame-Soy Dip with Seaweed Chips

Pour a drizzle of tamari or soy sauce into a small bowl. (Be sure to get wheat-free tamari if you want gluten-/wheat-free chips!) Add a drizzle of toasted sesame oil. Unrefined and untoasted sesame oil works, too, but the toasted version is more nutty and sesame-tasting. You could also stir in a bit of ground ginger if you’re in a gingery mood.

Tear up some nori into bite-sized pieces and serve them with the dip. It really is that simple.

Enjoy!

Homemade California Rolls

First off, I have to say that I am not a sushi chef.  California rolls are one of the simplest types of sushi you can make, and I could barely pull those off.  But I will also say that making your own sushi doesn’t have to be terribly complicated as long as you have a nice sheet or two of yaki nori (roasted nori) seaweed, a little bamboo rolling mat (very helpful), good-quality ingredients to put inside, and very dry hands.  (Wet hands stick to the nori.)  Most packages of nori have illustrations on the back showing you each step of the sushi-rolling process; from there, it’s really a matter of grabbing the bull by the horns — or the crab by the claws — and getting hands-on practice.  The good news is that your sushi will taste great even if it would never pass a first-day-sushi-trainee inspection.

For this batch, I cooked brown rice and mixed it with a tiny hint of rice vinegar (sushi rice often has sugar as well, but I don’t like things very sweet).  Then I added a few slices of avocado and some canned crabmeat and carefully rolled up the nori sheet, gently compacting the roll into a rounded shape as I went.  (You have to keep moving it towards you on the bamboo mat so that you don’t wind up rolling the mat into the sushi itself.)  Other great additions to California rolls would be finely-chopped cucumber and small pieces of fresh mango.  Or replace the crab with cooked cocktail shrimp!

I’m starting to get the feeling that lots of ingredients would pair well with the faint nutiness of the brown rice and the tangy saltiness of the seaweed.  And as long as you go slowly and use a very sharp knife to cut your rolls into pieces, you should be able to come up with a respectable plate of sushi.  (Note on the cutting process:  I found it best to use the tip of the knife and turn the roll as I went, continually cutting through the somewhat-crispy outer layer of nori, rather than shove out the filling by smashing the roll down flat with the full blade of the knife.)  And if you have access to ultra-fresh fish, you might want to incorporate that into your rolls as well.

For those sushi lovers who are pursuing the gluten-free life, it is possible to find tamari (very similar to soy sauce) made without wheat.  Difficult, but possible.  Any market with a decent Asian-goods section ought to stock it.

Enjoy!