Tomato and mange tout scattered sushi recipe

December 10, 2012December 10, 2012Leave a comment

Scattered sushi is a nice summer dish for the bento as the vinegared rice helps it to stay fresher for longer. But, you can eat it any time of the year! Here the rice is covered with chopped, deseeded cherry tomatoes from the vine, chopped, blanched mange tout, and toasted sesame seeds. In the top part of the bento is teriyaki chicken, salted edamame beans and soy sauce eggs (with some vinegar and sugar added to the mixture to preserve and to cut through the strong soy sauce taste).

There are some great scattered sushi recipes (including this one) in the book Sushi: Taste and Technique by Kimiko Barber.

INGREDIENTS

1 cup of raw Japanese rice
Konbu
Splash of sake
4-6 tbsp sushi seasoning or rice vinegar
Packet mange tout
Packet cherry tomatoes
1 tbsp white sesame seeds, toasted

METHOD

Place the raw rice in your rice cooker as usual, and add the konbu and sake, along with the required amount of water. This should make enough rice for two bento boxes.
When the rice is done, allow it to steam for 10 minutes, then remove and place it in a dampened, flat container. Sprinkle over the sushi vinegar, then fold and fan the rice (using a wet spatula) until no more steam rises from it. Cover with a damp towel and leave to sit until cool.
Blanch the mange tout and slice thinly on the diagonal. Deseed the cherry tomatoes and chop them into wedges.
Spread a mixture of the mange tout and tomatoes over the top of the rice, then sprinkle on the sesame seeds.

Omurice

June 22, 2011November 19, 20122 Comments

I’m one of those weird people who gets all funny about ketchup. I like it, don’t get me wrong, but I have certain rules about it – which I’ve never really examined in too much depth, to be honest. For example, it is never to be squirted onto food – makes it soggy. Better to go on the side, by itself, so it can be dipped into. Also, it is never to be mixed in with things to create some hideous Frankenfood of soggy ketchup and ‘other stuff’. That’s just wrong.

So, with that in mind, it’s very strange that one of my most favourite and comforting foods should be omurice: the dish that breaks my cardinal food rules and somehow manages to rise above its offence:

Omurice is basically rice and veggies cooked with some ketchup, then coated in an omelette and served with another drizzle of ketchup on top. It’s comfort food for children, which makes it all the more weird how strangely nostaglic the dish is for me, a 28-year-old woman who has never lived in Japan… But nevertheless, there’s something very universal about its combination of starchy carbs, eggy protein, and lashings of tomato sauce.

This recipe makes four portions:

INGREDIENTS

Butter
2 chicken thighs, boned
1 onion
50g carrot
1 green pepper
2 shiitake mushrooms
1 tbsp parsley
4 cups cooked Japanese rice
3 tbsp ketchup
1 tsp sake
Dash Worcestershire sauce
8 eggs
Ketchup to serve

METHOD

Finely chop the onion, carrot, mushroom and parsley.
Debone the chicken and remove the skin. Cut the thigh into small pieces, around 1cm in size, then season with salt and pepper.
Heat 1 tbsp butter in a frying pan and sauté the onion until slightly softened. Add the chicken and fry until the outside has gone white. Add the carrot, pepper and mushrooms and cook until soft. This could take as long as ten minutes. You need to ensure the carrot is tender, as it will not be cooked again. Add the parsley and remove from the heat, reserving the mixture and wiping out the frying pan.
Melt 1 tbsp of butter in a frying pan and add the hot rice, stirring well. Add the fried mix along with the ketchup, sake and Worcestershire sauce. Season if needed, and keep warm. Do not over cook as this will dry out the rice.
In another, shallow frying pan, heat 1 tsp butter. Beat two of the eggs, season with salt, then pour into the frying pan, spreading to cover the base. Put a quarter of the rice in the middle of the pan while the egg is still slightly raw. This helps to stick the rice mixture to the omelette.
When the eggs are slightly set, wrap the edges over the top of the rice and turn out onto a warm plate. Don’t worry if you pierce the egg as you do so, as the edges are tucked under. Using a paper towel, shape it as in our photo, then squirt tomato sauce on the top. Continue with the rest of the eggs and mixture until you’ve made four omelettes.

You can also keep this for the following day, and serve it in a bento ala the picture!

British bacon and asparagus sushi

August 26, 2009November 18, 2012Leave a comment

Even though nobody cares but me, every so often I sort of get myself into this little crusade to link together British and Japanese cooking. Don’t laugh, it’s actually not completely far fetched. Did you know that some very essential Japanese sauces, like okonomiyaki and tonkatsu sauce, are based on Worcestershire sauce? Did you also know that curry rice came to Japan from India by way of British companies? Come on, you can’t tell me you thought that brown gloop came from anywhere but the UK…

So, every so often I come up with something that’s sort of Japanese, but using British ingredients, and it’s never worked so well as it did with this scattered sushi recipe. It’s really simple, and it’s really good – and it’s great for hot summer days, too. Probably one of the main reasons this works is because the vinegar in the sushi rice dressing mimics the acidity of tomato ketchup. Hey, whatever it is, it tastes lovely.

INGREDIENTS

2 cups Japanese rice (around 430g)
6tbsp sushi rice vinegar (or check label)
1 tbsp sake (optional)
1 piece dried konbu (optional)
2 eggs
1 egg yolk
2 tsp cornflour
Large pinch salt
Pinch sugar
Vegetable oil
Packet streaky bacon (smoked or unsmoked – your choice!)
500g asparagus tips

METHOD

Make your sushi rice – I recommend you buy a rice cooker, as it takes all of the guesswork and stress out of cooking rice.
Firstly, wash the rice thoroughly and leave it to soak for half an hour. Then, drain and add your sushi rice to the same quantity of water in your rice cooker. Add the sake and konbu if using, then switch on and leave to cook. Once it has finished, leave it to rest for 15 minutes.
Turn the rice out into a damp, flat container (like a pyrex oven dish) and add the sushi rice vinegar. Using a damp wooden spoon, turn the rice gently to coat it in the seasoning. At the same time, fan the rice to cool it and help it to absorb the dressing. Continue until no visible steam rises from the rice, and place it under a damp kitchen towel.
Make thin Japanese omelettes by combining the eggs, egg yolk, salt and sugar in a bowl. Add the cornflour dissolved in 4 tsp water. Heat the oil in a frying pan, and add enough oil to coat the base. Thinly cover the pan with the egg, and heat until almost set. Then, turn the omelette over to finish it off. Do not allow it to colour. Continue until all the egg has been cooked, then roll the omelettes up and shred them finely.
Fry the bacon until very crispy. Snip into small pieces.
Steam the asparagus, and when cooked, remove the tips and slice the stems into small coins.
Divide the rice into four bowls, and top with the bacon, asparagus and omelette.