Bento take 3 – Sushi

Growing up, I could never understand why my mother scoffed at going to Japanese restaurants.  You’d think she’d jump at the chance since it would be like a “slice of home” away from home.  However, whenever it would come up, she’d look at the menu, unimpressed, and then balk at the prices.  Needless to say, I can only remember going to a Japanese restaurant in America once (and it was like going with the food critic of The New York Times). 

You know how they say that as you grow older, you realize that you’re just like your mother?  Well, hello, mom!  I do the exact same thing – I look at the menu and proceed to go on about how I could make it all at home at a fraction of the cost.  At least mom went once, whereas we’ve yet to go.  It’s odd, really, because I don’t throw the same kind of fuss over American restaurants, even though I can cook that as well.  Still, it’s reassuring when your hubby tells you that he doesn’t mind since he thinks your sushi is tops! 

This third take on the bento features sushi.  No, not the fishy kind.

Making futomaki sushi (a type of makisushi that feature the seaweed wrapper) is actually really easy, as long as you have the ingredients and equipment.  In fact, a lot of Japanese cooking is relatively easy and it’s only obtaining the supplies that can be a bit tricky.

Futomaki sushi shouldn’t be confused with the typical “raw fish” sushi (or sashimi), or “California rolls” (even if they do share a slight resemblance to the latter).  Futomaki sushi are often vegetarian and include cucumber, spinach (optional), egg, shitake, and kampyo (dried gourd).

You can make the seasoned shitake and kampyo days before, and you can even freeze them for a handy supply for emergency sushi rolls or loose sushi rice (chirashizushi).  I often cook up a big batch and then freeze them in separate packets with no harm (just remember to defrost them and microwave until  warm, but not overly hot, before making the sushi).

The English cucumber is simply cut into 4-5 inch long, thin rectangles and the egg is simply scrambled, cooked like a big pancake in a pan, cooled and sliced into long strips.  Nothing fancy or tricky.  It’s all very simple and the beauty of sushi is that you don’t have to be perfect!  It’s rolled and cut up anyways, so no one’s the wiser.

Rolling the sushi can be slightly tricky, if you don’t follow a few key tips.

1. Dip your fingers into a bit of rice vinegar to help spread the prepared sushi rice (which is just rice vinegar and sugar to taste) over the nori (seaweed wrapper).  If you don’t, you’ll have sticky fingers and no luck.
2. Spread the rice more thinly at the edges – especially at the opposite end from where the ingredients are placed.
3. Place your ingredients in rows with equal spacing at one end of the roll nearest to you.  If you lump it all together or spread it all over the roll like a cinnamon bun, it won’t roll correctly and you’ll have problems lining everything up.
4. Roll from the end where the ingredients are closer to the edge.  This way you can “tuck” the ingredients into the middle of the roll.
5. After you’ve rolled the sushi, gently but firmly squeeze the roll with the mat still around it so that it stays together.
6. This isn’t really important, but if aesthetics is your thing, place the shiny side of the nori face-down onto your mat for a prettier roll.

I find that futomaki sushi lasts a day or two at room temperature as long as it’s in a sealed container, but do be aware that if you fridge it, the rice will harden a bit.  I have yet to experience any problems with sushi in bento without being chilled, but I wouldn’t want to advocate it in case there’s some issues with bacteria.  If it scares you, then go ahead and fridge it.

Shitake and Kampyo for Sushi

Ingredients

• 8-10 dried shitake
• 1 pkg kampyo (see how to prep below)
• 4 tbsp Soy sauce
• 4 tbsp Mirin
• 4 tbsp Sugar (or  2 packets splenda)
• 1 1/2 cups dashi stock (1 1/2 cups water + 1 stick of dashi powder)

Directions:

1. Prepare the kampyo by washing it in water and then vigorously rubbing salt all over.  Rinse and place kampyo into warm water for at least 30 min to reconstitute – the kampyo is done soaking when it has expanded.  I generally soak my kampyo and shitake together in the same bowl.
2. Place kampyo, shitake and the other ingredients into a medium saucepan and bring to a boil.
3. Reduce heat to a simmer and cook until liquid is reduced to about a 1/4.
4. Take off heat, let cool, then slice the shitake into about ¼ inch strips and the kampyo into about 12 inch strips (long enough to fit the length of the nori).
5. Store in the fridge or the freezer for future uses.

Frozen Morsels

Lately, I’ve been scanning my parents’ photo albums into the computer to preserve the pictures and to keep a copy for ourselves.  The books are large and unwieldy as I balance them on the old scanner with one hand while pressing the appropriate series of commands with the other.

There are a lot of pictures.

I’m not done with even a quarter of the albums, but I’m slowly making my way through.  Pictures of varying sizes, shades, and grain quality are packed into the books and it isn’t a surprise if a few fall out as I juggle them.

The image captures a moment, but for someone who was too young to remember, many of the moments are blanks – only recognizable if they are holiday or birthday snaps.  I vaguely remember the people in the photos and for many of them, even if I do know them, I doubt they’re the same now as they were then.

I love looking at the old family photos, though.  Everyone is wearing 70s or 80s clothing and the hair to match.  Even though I can clearly imagine the type of birthday or Easter dinner happening in the shot (nothing changes in my family), I feel as if the time-lapse has made the event “special”.   People are caught laughing and pointing at something that no one remembers anymore.  I’d love to go back to that time and find out what’s being said, because we don’t really laugh like we used to at get-togethers.  Everyone is polite, but there have been fewer and fewer convulsive moments of laughter.

In one shot, my great grandmother is caught smiling radiantly off camera. Her  bright white hair sits atop her head, just like I remember seeing it styled when we used to visit her.  As a very young child, those visits were always a mixture of dread and fun.

We  would play ping pong in her basement and pretend there were ghosts hiding in the dark corners as we chased after the balls.  My cousins would raid her candy jar (always filled again at the next visit), and I would sit precariously on her old rocker.  When it was time to leave, I would always scrunch up my face in childish disgust as she’d give me a big wet kiss on the cheek.  Never once did she take offense and instead laughed and smiled and told me that she couldn’t wait to see me the next time.  This would happen without fail until her progressed Alzheimer’s took it away.

And her smile.

My parents bought the house once she died and they remodeled it a bit, but it still has the garish pink and black tiles with blue tub in the bathroom, a few pieces of her furniture in the bedrooms, and the large rhubarb at the side of the house.

She was well known for her canning and pie making.  Having lived through the depression, canning came second nature and she was doing it all the way up to the point until she couldn’t anymore.  In fact, it was the proverbial straw meet camel’s back in her stages through Alzheimer’s.  After she burned herself in the middle of canning and it was deemed that she couldn’t live alone anymore, she was never the same.

I’m not certain whether the rhubarb growing at my parents’ house is the same one, but it doesn’t matter.  It’s in the same spot and therefore the same one in my mind.  Delicious rhubarb pies, crumbles and jams came out of the plant every year and I developed my taste for tartness from it.  My mother had given me a big bag of freshly cut rhubarb to use last summer, but the timing was never right. I wanted to make a strawberry rhubarb pie, because it combines two of my favorite flavors, but there were other desserts to make.  Other things to eat.  If only the freezer could freeze more than just food.

I had the opportunity last week when the bright red berries went on sale and we didn’t have any other desserts to get in the way.  I made it using a combination of recipes to achieve the flavor, consistency and just rightness I was remembering.

The pie was like a memory explosion on the tongue.  Even though it wasn’t her recipe, the fact that I will always associate rhubarb with her and only eat the rhubarb that comes from that plant meant that each bite was filled with a smile, a pair of bright eyes and a soft feeling.  There’s a lot of pain wrapped up in the memory of my great grandmother, too, (Alzheimer’s saw to that) but like the tartness from the rhubarb, it’s a part of her, and her overall joy at being with us and being our great grandmother blends with that tart feeling to become one of happiness every time.

The following pie recipe is a product of two recipes and two different cookbooks.  I didn’t want a double crust pie, so I looked up a great crumble recipe in my William’s Sonoma Baking book and used the filling from my Pillsbury Complete Book of Baking cookbook.  The result was absolutely delicious with a dollop of whip on top. Hubby and I both agreed that it was the perfect pairing of flavor and texture.

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

Ingredients

1 pie crust (I used Trader Joe’s pie crust since I don’t like making pie crust and we love the flavor of the TJ one)

Filling

• 3 cups rhubarb, diced (mine were frozen)
• 3 cups strawberries, diced
• Sugar or splenda to taste (the original recipe called for 1 cup of sugar, but I added a couple tablespoons of Splenda with no problems)
• ¼ cup cornstarch (I used potato starch mixed with a little water)
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice

Crumble

•  1 cup flour
• 1/2 cup old fashioned oats
• 1/3 cup firmly packed brown sugar (or 3 tablespoons Brown Sugar Splenda)
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 2-3 dashes of ground ginger
• ½ cup butter, melted (I used Country Crock)

 Directions

1. Form crust in pie pan and set aside.
2. Mix crumble ingredients together in a small bowl and set aside.
3. Mix filling ingredients except for the starch in a pan and bring just to a boil.  Stir in starch and take off heat as it gels together.  Stir gently.  Don’t overcook or over stir  (we’re not making jam).  Just mix it up a bit to blend in the starch.
4. Pour filling into the pie crust and top with crumble.
5. Bake at 375 F for 40 minutes or until crust and crumble turn golden brown and filling bubbles.
6. Cool completely before serving.

Steamed buns, nikuman, or baozi

I get it into my head sometimes to just do something completely new, completely different, and so completely not what I planned the day before.

This morning, I decided to make nikuman.

Except, not quite nikuman because that would involve pork.  And I don’t do pork.  At least not for me, and by golly, these buns were going to be MINE.

And I’ve never made nikuman, ever.  Unless you count the premade ones in the freezer, but I haven’t bought any of those for years (and they don’t count).

And I may have made 12 of them, and obviously I can’t eat 12.

I did eat 3, though, but that wasn’t my fault. I mean, just look at them:

I used a packet of Banh Bao flour bought at my local asian grocery story.  I picked it up, and the steamer sheets, on a whim a year and a half ago.

Late is better than never, right? 

The packet basically contained a mixture of flours and leavenings.  All I had to add was a cup of milk, a 1/4 cup of splenda (or a 1/2 cup of sugar) and a tablespoon of olive oil.  After a bit of kneading, I was ready for the 30 minute rise and bun making.

The majority of the buns are filled with a mixture of:

• 6 or 7 shitake, diced
• 2-3 leaves of bok choy, diced
• 1 bunch of green onions, thinly sliced
• 2 tsp diced ginger
• about 1 tbsp soy sauce

This is all horribly lacking in precision because I basically tossed ingredients together that I thought would taste good.

I did take a bit of creative license and filled one bun with some leftover curry from last night.  It was cold, so it was easy to make the bun, but once it was cooked, it burnt my tongue. 

Definitely be careful with your fillings and don’t be a glutton!  Unlike me.  I was too eager to chow down and now I am paying for my lack of restraint.

I also filled two with koshian (a sweet adzuki bean paste), but I’m waiting to have those for when hubby comes home.

Making the buns was a lot easier than I thought  – I’ve always bought them in the past, and even then it seemed like sheer luck to get a packet that not only was vegetarian but tasted good.

These buns are fantastic and the flour mix was easy and delicious!  I’m definitely going to try out more fillings the next time I get the craving for steamed buns.  I’m thinking a chocolate filling or even a cream cheese filling would be wonderful!

Update on aikido:  Well, after a lot of thought, and the dawning realization that over a $120 a month for lessons on an electronic debit basis was a bit high, we’ve decided to put our aikido on hold and instead, try out a few other things before committing.   I’m very thankful for what our short time in aikido taught us, and it’s not like we can’t join later.  As it is, we’re going to poke our noses into other hobbies/activities before we settle.

Source: flickr.com viaiscribbler on Pinterest