Chirashi Sushi & Teriyaki Salmon  

Posted by: anna* in , , , , , ,

Yes, I´m still alive. School has been eating me and life is everything but kind in general. Actually I should be sitting somewhere reading and writing stuff for my paper about Taisho Culture, due next week, right now. But I don´t want tooooo....
So I´m telling you about my cooking adventure from last weekend.
I went to my lovely friend Mako and her lovely husband´s place and we cooked tons of extremely yummy japanese food.
Here´s what we made:

Chirashi Sushi. Basically seasoned rice with whatever you want mixed in it. It´s as easy as it is delicious. You cook the rice, then dress is with vineagar and sugar or with readymade Sushi-Seasoning (available at any asian supermarket). We fried two pieces of fresh salmon and then chopped it into smallest pieces, added green onions and peapods.
For the topping we took one egg, scrambled it up, added a tiny bit of salt and sugar and made a very thin omlette. Which, after it colled off, was rolled up and cut into very thin strips. Also on top of tis delicious dish went nori strips. Mako had those readymade at home but since they´re not available over here (why, oh why?)i usually cut my nori at home myself.
And that´s pretty much it. We had way too much and I would have loved to eat the whole bowl.

Next was Teriyaki Salmon. Very easy as well. We took a piece of fresh salmon (with skin) for each of us and fried it. No fat, mind you. Salmon is greasy enough by itself, really. We did use Japanese non-sticky-tinfoil in the pan, though. Something I really need!
After frying the fish until it was crispy from all sides, we poured some Soysauce into the pan, added sugar until it was sweet enough for our tastes (maybe one Tablespoon?), then some water. We should have added some sake as well but I don´t think we did. Did we add Mirin? Not sure, sorry.
Then we put the Salmon into the sauce and let it simmer until the sauce got thick and syrupy. Don´t forget to turn the fish around so that every side gets its share.
What else?
We cooked string beans. And then grinded some roasted sesame in one of those fantastic bowls that I keep forgetting the name of. Suribachi. That´s the name. I love them. I need one!
When the sesame was just a paste I added some misopaste until it was a very light, not too thick sauce. Together with the beans it makes a great salad.





Mako had some selfmade Tofu prepared and we put some green onions and some katsuobushi (bonito flakes) on top. This eaten together with a little bit of soy sauce is gorgeous.









We also had some tiny fishes that noone of us knew before, called smelt. Doesn´t sound too yummy, right? But they are. They´re only about the size of a small hand and very good. We shortly thought about what to do with them and then decided we´d salt some, rub the others with misopaste and just put them in the oven.
Two of them even had eggs inside. Mmmmh. We just put that in the oven as well. It kinda burned but even crispy it was good. A little soysauce and it´s perfect with a sip of Sake.

For dessert I made some purin, japanese custard pudding with caramel sauce. My sensei´s recipe. It´s very easy. I´ll post it here, soon. Unfortunately I tried out new molds to make them and since they were made of some kind of metal I guess I´d better reduce the temperature next time when I steam them. This time I got unwanted bubbles on the edges. But it was still good.



Everything took us about two hours to make and it was so worth it. Everything was very yummy. Very! And since all of it can be eaten cold or lukewarm there´s no need to hurry. I´ll sure cook all of that again, just because it´s tasty and easy and I´m thinking that even for western tastes the Miso-fishies are still good.







眞子、竜さん。超楽しかった! We´ll cook again sometime soon, right?
Now back to reading. And then some writing?
Anyways. I hope I´ll be back soon.