Justin & Meredith Winokur's Kitchen Cooking Notebook
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Homemade Tuna Sushi and Bahn Mi Garden Rolls -- back to top
We took two Vietnamese dishes and combined them. We used Meredith's Mushroom Pate, sliced cucumbers, Meredith's pickled carrots, sliced jalapeños, cilantro and Pan-Seared Tofu.
The Tofu was based on Kenji's Method (from Serious Eats). You use boiling water to get more water out of the tofu. Then you press the tofu and finally, pan-fry/sear it. You do not marinate it but after it is cooked, you can then put it in the sauce. We used a mixture of TJ's Soyaki (aka Soy Vay), sriracha and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice. The tofu was very good.
The rolls themselves were good. Some were better and more tightly rolled than others but they were all flavorful. The mushroom pate got kind of lost in them which is unfortunate since it's so good. A tip Meredith discovered is to put down on the bottom whatever you want to be most visible.
We made tuna, avocado and cucumber sushi. We found that at The Fresh Market, they will sell you still vacuum and frozen sashimi grade tuna for a really amazing price! You just have to ask for the still-frozen stuff. We used that and it tasted fine. No fishy flavor at all. Very clean but flavorful.
Cutting it was kind-of a nightmare. It wasn't clear which way the grain went and we forgot whether or not you are supposed to cut along it or against it. Still, we managed to get the 7ozpiece sufficiently cut.
More details on the rice below.
We made the sushi rice using Alton Brown's recipe (also below). The recipe worked well enough. Some layer of rice burned on the bottom but we carefully scraped off of it to avoid the burned flavor. Otherwise, the only change was to go a bit light on the salt since we (a) had less rice and (b) were using a different and potentially more fine salt.
It came out very flavorful but way too sticky. As you can see from some of the pictures, we had a lot of trouble getting a thin layer on the nori and did not have a great rice coating. I need to read up on how to spread it and/or look at other recipes. I did really like the flavor though.
We forgot to buy wasabi so we served with sriracha (which we also had out for the rolls). And soy sauce. We also had some peanut sauce from Whole Foods that wasn't very good. I mixed in a bit of sriracha which helped a little but not much.
Sushi Rice (from Alton Brown)
Local Copy -- password is the name of my dog, all lower case
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 7444, 2014-02-16_120721
Failed Reuben Crepes, then Semi-Failed Reuben Garden Rolls...and Roasted Green Beans -- back to top
After the success of crepes the last time I decided to try to make reuben crepes. I made crepe batter with Alton Brown's Recipe (not copied), halved, and with rye flour. I also used almond milk instead of regular milk, Brummel and Browns instead of butter. And I combined it in a cup and used the immersion blender. I did it in the morning for tonight. It was very thick but I assumed/hoped it would thin with time.
Well, tonight I went to make the creped and it was way too thick. The first one barely spread and was impossible to flip. I added some water and tried again. They also failed so I tried to make it thicker. Nope! They would spread but I couldn't get it to flip. When I would try to pick it up, it tore.
I have a lot of ideas of what may have gone wrong. They are as follows (in a_rough_ order)
So anyway, next time, I will go back to the eggy recipe from last time but I'll use 50% rye flour. You can see the final rye-egg mush I had at the end in the photos
I had all of the stuff out for making reubens (see the photos). So I pulled out the [22cm] rice paper wrappers and made them into garden rolls. I added a tiny bit of the rye mush (so I could say it had rye) and I also added caraway seeds. As you can see from the photos below, they did a pretty good job getting into rolls but I wanted to melt the cheese.
I recalled seeing someone pan-fry the garden rolls so I tried that. I used a thin layer of oil and pan fried them. Well, they did not hold up well. They stuck to the bottom of the pan and tore. The parts that did not stick were quite good. The roll was kind of crispy and bubbly.
I do not know why it didn't occur to me to bake them. It would have been less oil and certainly less rough. Next time.... (update: see this post. Baking worked very well)
Not much to say here. It occurred to me that while I claim the best way to cook all vegetables is by roasting1, I have never tried it with green beans. I read around and settled on 15 minutes at 450. They were pretty good. Mushier but I enjoyed them.
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 7526, 2014-02-26_090116
Okra may be the exception but I think I should try again. ↩
Baked Breakfast Garden Rolls -- back to top
I was still bummed about yesterday's issues and I had a bit of extra time this morning so I made breakfast garden rolls. The filling was just 2 scrambled eggs and about 1/3 of a Gimme Lean sausage, cut and sautéd. And, when I was assembling, I added a small amount of part-skim mozzarella. (plus some salt and pepper)
I made two with the 22 cm wrappers but I had a lot of extra filling so I made a larger one with the 33 cm wrappers that could hold it all. It was a bit hard wrapping with warm, wet ingredients but it ended up fine. Just a bit loose.
I put them on a baking sheet with non-stick aluminum foil and sprayed them with pam. I baked them at 425 for 15 minutes.
They came out pretty good. Fairly crispy and harder. The cheese was melted (the main reason for baking them) and they held together very well. Clearly, this would have been preferable the day before.
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 7530, 2014-02-27_071846
Lentil Egg and Spring rolls -- back to top
I made lentil egg rolls and spring rolls. I used the recipe on the back of the egg-roll wrappers (see photo from last time) with a few modifications. First of all, I used lentils instead of meat. I cooked 3/4 cup lentils in 1.5 cups water for 10 minutes and drained. Meanwhile, I finely chopped and sautéd mushrooms which gave the whole dish a lot of flavor. The only other changes were to go heavy on the ginger (also like last time), heavy on the oyster sauce, and add some soy sauce, sriracha and a bit of rice vinegar. I used half of a small head of cabbage while last time, it was a quarter of a large head.
The recipe doesn't say much about after adding the sauce. I kept it going until it all cooked down nicely. I also didn't let it cool before filling.
I decided to cook it hotter at 425°F for 15 minutes. As you can see from the photos, I did 6 egg rolls and 6 spring rolls. Two of the spring rolls were the large ones and they were too big. I had to eat it with a fork and knife. Also, the eggs rolls really were much better when it comes to heating/warming the rolls. But, the wrappers are a lot less healthy compared to the rice paper.
The rolls were very, very good! They tasted like regular egg rolls but fresher and less greasy inside. I will certainly do these again. They are "almost vegetarian" but I used real oyster sauce. If I want to do them fully vegetarian, I could use the vegan oyster sauce from 2013-06-17(the wrappers have egg in them so they won't be vegan).
Also, while I was cutting the carrot, it was a strange shape so I used my hands with the pan to go to the finger guard as I got closer. It would have been a fine plan had my hand not slipped. I took off a nice chuck of my thumb. Oops!
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 7609, 2014-03-12_205604