Fortune

I got this fortune cookie at the sushi place yesterday:

Zucchini Challenge: Disastrous Plating Failure

While drunk in a Manhattan bar after a trip to the Guggenheim, Erin and I were discussing the challenge. Here's what we came up with. Tuna tartare with chopped vinegar soaked zucchini topped with a poached (because I wasn't sure about raw) quail egg. The plate is rimmed with tonkatsu sauce and dollops of spicy kewpie mayonnaise and garnished with zuchinni peel (as per Kyle's bitching). I have never been able to plate dishes for my life so trust that it tasted better than it looked. Erin agreed.I started with fresh sushi grade tuna I had gotten at the asian market on rt 18. I badgered the hell out of the guy because neither of us could find a common language but eventually we agreed it was in fact fresh sushi grade tuna and that we are both fans of giving thumbs up. I guess we all speak the international language of The Fonz.Here is the chopped zucchini sitting in vinegar. I did that just for some extra taste. We then rinsed the zucchini and incorporated it with the tuna.I couldn't get the water spinning fast enough so the eggs poached a little wispy but they were still good. Not quite as good as a raw egg yolk sitting on your tartare but I wasn't 100% sure about these quail eggs so I didn't want to chance it.Erin spent most of the time snacking on these spicy wasabi crackers and cherry tomatoes I picked up at the asian grocery while getting the tuna. I eventually convinced her to chop up some zucchini and tomatos together for a cracker topping. Here's her rebuttal to my dish. She incorporated leftover tuna. It was miles better than what I made.She also topped these suckers off with some spicy kewpie mayonnaise leftover from my dish. These little bastards were increadible. Perfect spice to match the coolness of the zucchini and the tuna. I think she beat me. Not afraid to admit it.

The "Sushi Taco"

My recent breakfast that Meredith has affectionately dubbed the sushi taco. The inspiration for this was the CwD episode on onigiri. I've been wanting to make those for a while but I'm too impatient to let the rice cool so I just dump the pot of rice on the nori. I had at one point not even cut the nori and just folded it over. The result was just tacoish enough to earn an alias.

I drop a piece of nori across the plate and start up the rice. Sushi rice. As it begins to boil down i throw in some chopped onions and dried wakame. The wakame expands in the remaining water. Once its just about ready I crack an egg over the top of the rice and cover the lid. It steam cooks the egg just over the rice. Perfection. Last night I covered the nori with a layer of rice (which in all fairness could have been cooked just a bit longer), then a layer of tunamayo, then rice topping with bonito sesame and more nori, then more sushi rice and finally the steamed egg. I then cover it in tonkatsu sauce. I love tonkatsu sauce. It gives a fruity kick to whatever I'm eating. For a while I was on oyster sauce but this is my new current fave.

Being that I cooked this at 3am lat night there wasn't enough light so the picture isnt great. Here's one with a flash. EDIT: PICTURE COLOR CORRECTED BY SISTER.
I doubled the recipe and made one for Blake too. We chowed down while watching Starship Troopers. Excellent movie. Excellent breakfast/dinner.

This is a picture of the other one. I wasn't sure which one looked better. You be the judge. EDIT: THIS PICTURE ALSO COLOR CORRECTED BY SISTER.

Sushi Explosion

I just made a ton of hand rolls. They were pretty great, if I do say so myself. And I do. As a newb to the world of sticky rice making, I wasn't sure what to expect, but it was easy. Now I have a ton of leftovers, so tomorrow's looking more and more like riceball day. My fillings for this round of temaki included cuke, avocado, shrimp, and fake crab. I bought the krabstix at that gourmet place across the street from South Orange station. Also scored a giant fucking sour pickle and ate it for dinner with burgers and roasted potatoes by huzz. Now me and the cat are lying on our stomachs trying to keep cool.

BENTO BOXES

Meredith and I have been obessed with bento boxes for quite some time now. Whenever we go out for Japanese, Meredith orders the bento and we are constantly talking about buying our own boxes to bring to work or school or pretty much anywhere. Today we had decided to bring them to the movies. The original plan was to put together some bento boxes based on whatever movie we were gonna go see and sit in the theater with them. We had spent maybe half an hour sending eachother pictures of different crazy bento boxes on the internet. Unfortunately I over slept and we ended up not going to the movie. We spent way too long wandering the aisles of the RT 18 Asian Market to get all our ingredients including two packs of sashimi from the restaurant we love out in front of the market. Then we went home and got to work. The picture above is the ingredients we were going to use. Once we got the rice going we started opening up the canned fish and making the "tuna mayo" (CwD).

This picture is Meredith packing one of her rice balls. I think this one is "tuna mayo" wrapped with a strip of nori and covered in rice topping. We kept forgetting to cut the nori first and it turned into a mad scramble with our hands covered in sticky rice.

This is one of the bentos filled with rice balls (boxes courtesy of our mom). They were all sooooo gooooood. Luckily Meredith didn't eat all of hers and I had leftovers that I'm eating while I'm typing this.

This is my finished bento. I wish I had a picture of Meredith's. It was much more elegant. I kinda just shoved stuff in there. Below my initials and the sashimi is a bed of sticky rice. Above it is cucumber strips, broiled eel and mackerel covered with avacado and eel sauce, oysters, fake crab meat, and an anchovy.
This is a picture of Meredith eating a rice ball and getting pissed at me for taking pictures of her eating. She hates when I do that. Anyway the bentos and rice balls were delicious. We ended up sitting around eating them and watching Metalocalypse. A truly blogworthy night.