Japanese night

One of Daiku and my all-time favorite cuisines is Japanese. In fact, I love all things Japan so much that my nickname for my husband, Daiku, is a shortened form of the word Daikon! I'd been craving sushi so much lately. In fact, I'd been having the following for lunch almost every day:



Brown rice and nori.

Tonight, we decided it was time to get serious and try making sushi. We assembled the ingredients:



(daikon, carrots, scallions, avocados, tempeh, and a cucumber and chili pepper from our garden) and we got to work. I decided to use the spicy tempeh roll recipe from the Post Punk Kitchen. You can find that recipe here, and I doubled it to have leftovers. The recipe calls for steamed tempeh to be mashed with chili oil and mayonnaise, and then rolled with rice and scallions. I have to admit, I found it pretty bland. Daiku finally solved the problem by adding some Vietnamese chili paste- that gave it the much-needed zing and made it taste like an authentic spicy tuna roll. If you like spicy, I recommend you kick PPK's recipe up a notch. I also added a few pieces of dulse to the mix for that extra sea flavor.

Made some seasoned rice...



Note: Brown rice worked almost as good as white rice (both were short grain) so use whichever you prefer. We liked the variety of having some rolls made with each.

We also used some rice seasoning made of nori strips, sesame seeds, salt and sugar.



Time to roll!



Bazu rolling her first sushi...



Daiku rolling his first...

And here's the result!



Ta da... not bad for a first try. The Post Punk Kitchen gives really good step-by-step instructions- how to toast the nori, how much rice to use, where to put each thing, etc.

We started to fill up the plate



And soon had too much. We did all kinds of combinations of tempeh, white/brown rice, and vegetables.



Some condiments (fresh pickled ginger, wasabi, tamari)



And we were good to go!



Your humble sushi chefs decided they deserved to put on their Japanese robes as a reward for a job well done.



Ahhh...ご馳走さま (gochisōsama) - click on the link to hear how to say "bon appetit" after a meal in Japanese

As much as we stuffed ourselves, we still had leftovers, which gave me a chance to use my favorite giraffe bento box to save them for tomorrow.



I don't know if it's the sushi, or the Asahi beer, but I'm feeling pretty giddy right now. Yay for sushi!

Japanese night