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
Okonomiyaki with Rutabaga Noodles -- back to top
Meredith and I made okonomiyaki again using the same basic recipe an the same basic changes. (see that post for a complete list, but basically we used mostly-cooked center-cut bacon instead of raw pork belly). However we did make a major change this time; we used rutabaga noodles!
It actually worked really well. We spiralized the noodles and then stir-fired them down until they were well cooked. We then used them like the regular ones including adding okonomiyaki sauce. They were slightly less crispy, but only by a little bit.
We would definitely do this again with these changes. Some prep but not too bad and lots of flavor.
A rough point calculation is (I didn't work it all out)
bacon ... 3
egg ... 2
flour ... 6
okonomiyaki sauce ... 1
Original Wordpress ID and Date: 9435, 2015-01-05_194519
Yakitori Quail Eggs, Fish and others stuff -- back to top
This seems like a big meal, but it wasn't too hard. The main part of the meal was also the smallest, the yakitori.
Meredith made yakitori quail eggs from this Ottolenghi recipe (local). Meredith followed it pretty closely except did it with fewer eggs. Also, she skewered the eggs before grilling them. Also, she just eye-balled the marinade.
We did the boiling for about 2.5 minutes but (likely because of the altitude) it was just barely soft-cooked.
The came out really good. Like a small ramen egg. Maybe a bit richer. But we need to let it go a bit longer next time. The sesame salt was also good.
Other than that, it was a mix of thing. We cooked a frozen fish thing from Trader Joes. Sadly, we didn't really read it and it was covered in olives. I was able to ate some of it but I mostly had the kabocha squash and asparagus for dinner.
Yakitori Soy grilled quail eggs with sesame salt (From Ottolenghi)
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Modified Hiroshima Okonomiyaki -- back to top
Meredith and I made a modified Hiroshima Okonomiyaki. We used the same basic recipe as the first time but with rutabaga noodles like the last. We had to make some changes again such as:
I think it worked pretty well for the most part. I had trouble flipping mine. And everything else but the bacon worked well. The bacon in the past was a great substitute, but this one (green chile flavor from Whole Foods) was really thick and fatty. That made it really hard to cook it down well on the pan and was fatty. So other than that, we liked it. It was a good bit of work but kind of fun.
Meredith also made delicata squash with the same method she used on 2015-01-01 but with less sugar and oil. That cooked nicely though it didn't really go with the Okonomiyaki. Finally, we made roasted cauliflower with smoked paprika, salt, and garlic powder but we're saving that for lunch.
Phew! Intense cooking for a Monday!
We make Japanese Curry. While we didn't make it from scratch, we used roux blocks which are very common in Japanese home cooking. They are really easy. You sauté the vegetables and then add 3 cups of water and half the package (or adjust as needed). Once they dissolve, it thickens a good bit.
We used:
And "super firm" tofu for the protein...which worked well.
We actually ended up letting it simmer for longer since we wanted to soften the potatoes (and the carrots to a lesser extent).
We decided not to serve it on rice, but there was more than enough food. We could probably do it on rice (maybe cauliflower?) to bulk it up and make lunches1. It was really good!
The curry we used:
The whole package is 12 "servings" so 3 each (~330 cal) is not too bad considering the other veggies. ↩