Homemade Sushi

Again my sister in law braved the strange foods and helped me get over my fears of sushi making too.
We gathered the supplies: nori (seaweed) wrappers, sushi rice, sushi vinegar and spices, and several sushi fillings.

I will admit that the firsf three rolls I made I refused to take a pictures of. They were that bad.
Which brings us to common mistakes #1: overfilling nori with rice and other fillings. Results include not enough to wrap and seal roll and/or ingredients busting out the ends.

After getting a good tight roll, I discoverd common mistake #2: Learning a gentle hand and cutting with a sharp knife. This is what ruins most of my rolls. I squeezed the rolls too hard or the knife would mash instead of cut.

I tried making a rice on the outside roll. They were extremely difficult for me because it was harder to slice into the nori after the knife got sticky from the rice.

By the end of the evening I had eaten a lot of mistakes and had some yummy lumpy rolls to eat.
Recently, I tried making sushi for a lunch my house. Kit can be odd about non-steak-&-taters meals so I was worried at first. He loved it!

These are traditional sushi rolls with raw fish. I had to consider my budget when making this lunch. The fillings for my sushi were canned flakey crab and cream cheese. I took canned tiny shrimp and marinated them in lime juice, garlic, ginger, salt and pepper. The result was a spicy shrimp roll. The ginger was perfecto.

Which leads me to my final sushi making tip and the best advice we heard from the dozens of youtube videos we watched. Give yourself a break. The best way to make good sushi is keep trying. It proves itself too, my second attempt at making sushi for Kit and me was a huge sucess. I had to eater fewer dud rolls than the first time.
Can’t wait to try different ingredients and give it another whirl.

Have you ever tried sushi making at home?
Have any tried and true tips you want to share?

Food Fotos

I have been trying to think of a lovely theme or nice way to tie my photos together for a blog. However, they would all be super short and simply saying: Hey, this is that one thing that I ate for dinner. And that sort of nonsense is for Instagram [which I also have].

So here are several food pictures of things I have been eating recently. If you’re interested in a recipe for it please let me know.

I know this picture is a little fuzzy, my apologies. I was starved and wanted to eat immediately. I knew I wouldn’t be able to get a good picture of it unless I snapped one right away.
We had fish with Catalina seafood rub, spiced rice from scratch, and Brussels sprouts coated in butter and nutritional yeast. This meal was orgasmic!

I followed this recipe as a basis for my plans, with some changes:

Soaking up the liquids–but not quite done

Tomato Rice Recipe Ingredients

• Oil to saute
• Onion – 1 large diced
• Ginger Paste & Garlic minced – Eyeballed (1.5 tsp and 2 TBSP)
• Chilli powder – eyeballed it
• Dried red pepper flakes – eyeballed it
• Curry powder – eyeballed maybe 1 TBSP
• Bay leaves – 2 leaves
• Salt to taste
• Tomatoes – 1 can diced
• Can of black beans – rinsed and drained
• Rice – 2 cups uncooked jasmine
• 3 cups of water or chicken broth
• NONE of the other ingredients listed on the website.

Saute onions with spices and a dab of oil. Add tomatoes, beans, rice and water. Bring to a boil and then reduce to simmer for 20 minutes or until liquid is gone and rice is tender.

Don’t forget to make hill billy paella with your leftover rice. We cooked up chorizo and shrimp to put into it this time and served it on a bed of fresh greens. So much yummy!

I made entirely too many rolls for Thanksgiving, but it was good to share them for more family anyway. I made roughly sixty rolls and they made it to two family functions. The left-left overs are in my freezer now. I hope to pull them out for a good hearty soup night this winter.

Just take a gander at those luscious rolls! Next time want to brush them with egg or milk to give them a right nice sheen. Although, as pictured above they are perfectly appealing. Have I ever shared my fun bun recipe? I feel another blog coming….

Day 354: Pot O’ Glumpki

I know I keep posting about glumpki, but I promise this is my last one. The process if very fastinating to me. I haven’t cooked anything similar to this before.

After mixing the meat and rice, blanching the cabbage and rolling the glumpki it is packed into a heavy bottomed pot that is lined with cabbage leaves.

After cleaning the pot I found out why we line it with extra leaves. There were two to four leaves that burned a bit, but all the glumpki were perfectly cooked.

We added four cans of diced tomatoes (I think) and a couple mini cans of tomatoe juice. We used plain diced tomatoes, but I wonder, for next time, how a garlic and herb spiced would taste.

Day 352: Wrapping up Glumpki

Next step, in making glumpki is the shave down the vein of each cabbage leaf as needed. Makes rolling and eating easier.

Roll together a small ball of the meat/rice concoction and roll it up in the prepped cabbage leaf.

Rinse and repeat. Or watch Kit wrap some cabbage rolls.

Day 351: Cabbage Blanch

Cabbage blanching!
Step one in making the cabbage rolls that our cousins taught us how to make. My hubbster had some Polish Aunts in his family. There are many carefully written recipes in teeny cursive that those lovely ladies left behind.

Maybe blanching is the wrong word, but essentially we submerged the cabbage heads in hot, near boiling, water until the leaves peeled away easily. Each leaf becomes the delectable wrapper for the meat.

[Not pictured] Kit mixing the 2 kinds of ground meat, rice and spices together in a large bowl by hand.