Posts from — July 2010

Throw a Sushi Party!

Come prepared to cook at my dinner party. That’s right – you need to work for your dinner. I love involving my guests in the cooking process. It’s a great way to bring people together – an icebreaker before the meal.

A quick demo: Illustrating the shiny side and the rough side of the nori.

Sushi Dinner Party Tips:

• Prepare the rice before guests arrive, and cover with a wet towel. For a large party have multiple tubs of seasoned sushi rice prepared.
• Prepare filling options ahead of time – ingredients should be washed, cut, or seasoned and mixed.
• Assign one person to the cutting board. Have a friend slice the rolls and place them on a platter.

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Classic miso soup combination contains tofu and wakame, but I often use daikon or cabbage. I’m a single working woman. I don’t cook as often as I plan, and eat less than the daily recommended servings of veggies. Putting fresh veggies into miso soup is a great way to get those vegetables in.

Daikon and cabbage last for months at a time. Even if I didn’t get to cooking one week or several months after purchasing my grocery, the daikon and cabbage is still good. Don’t “eww” me.

Miso soup with veggies, rice, and an egg is my quick bachlorette meal when I didn’t get a chance to cook. What is your quicky, go-to meal?

Serve with onigiri onigiri or sushi.

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On Blog Photography

Food bloggers makes posting appear effortless. They create the illusion that they snapped a picture of the sausage ragu from dinner last night, and shared the recipe with us the next day. Lies! Lies! All lies! They didn’t have it for dinner. They had ragu for breakfast! How dare I make such bold allegations?

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Rice ball is not exclusive to Japanese cuisine. On a recent trip to China, we came across breakfast vendors, who sold rice balls. Instead of using short grain rice, they use sweet (glutinous) rice. The fillings range from salted seaweed to various salted and pickled Chinese veggies.

Sonia enjoying her rice ball for 2.5rmb in Tunxi, Anhui China.

I ate my first rice ball (onigiri) in college, when my girlfriend Ayako whipped out two from her backpack and offered me half her lunch.  I loved the simplicity of it.  After one taste, I recreated it from memory, or so I had thought.  I realized I packed mine too dense when I tried another rice ball at Oms/b.

A great rice ball holds together just enough to eat with ease, yet retains the characteristics of soft individual morsels of rice. At the simplest form, rice ball requires only salt, but having a well stocked spice rack, I put my seasoning to use.  With the realization that I was not limited to salt and furikake, I went crazy with my shakers.

Triangular shaped onigiri.

I use the same seasoned rice to make some sushi – get some variations in my lunch while using the same ingredients. Sushi post to come.  Rice ball makes a convenient, no fuss lunch.

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