We rang in the New Year in grand style this year; we hosted a roll your own sushi party. We stuffed ourselves silly with little hand rolls (temaki) filled with everything from flying fish roe (tobiko) to soy sauce-and-mirin-braised lamb (for which I am pretty sure there is no Japanese word).
Sushi has been a favorite food of mine since the first time I tried it in land-locked St. Louis over twenty years ago. My friend, Adam, who introduced me to this incredible cuisine, was a sushi connoisseur (or at least I thought so at the ripe-old age of 20) and ordered for the table. Our first round included octopus (tako), squid (ika), and sea urchin (uni) with a raw quail egg. I think he was testing me to see how adventurous an eater I was. I ate every bite.
My friend disappeared from my life but sushi is still one of my favorite foods. If given a choice of cuisines, it’s always first on the list. I don’t think I’m alone. The fact that you can get sushi in Sandpoint and almost anywhere else in the US attests to its popularity.
The sushi we know and love today is a far cry from its beginnings in China in the 3rd century BC! Back then sushi, which translates to “sour tasting”, was a way to preserve fish. The fish was packed in rice and salt and left to ferment for long periods of time. The rice was then discarded and only the fish was eaten (and I’m guessing it was pretty sour by then).
Eventually this technique made its way to Japan where vinegar was added to the process and the rice was eaten as well as the fish. The addition of vinegar to the rice also made the fermentation process faster and it took only days instead of weeks or months for the sushi to be ready.
At some point in the late 1600s in Tokyo (then known as Edo) someone figured out how to make fast food sushi, where the fish was raw and the rice was cooked then seasoned with vinegar rather than fermented. The idea caught on quickly in cosmopolitan Edo, where the pursuit of pleasure was the fashion of the day. Sushi carts and stands popped up at sumo-wrestling matches, at the theatre, the baths and the brothels.
But fast food is not really an accurate description of sushi. Yes, the sushi chef might make it look quick and easy while you are sitting at the sushi bar but sushi chefs in Japan undergo a ten-year apprenticeship. They learn everything there is to know about fish and rice (not to mention nori, wasabi, ginger, and soy sauce) and spend three of the ten years just working on knife skills.
One of the most deceptively simple examples of nigiri sushi (those hand molded blocks of rice with a tasty morsel on top) is hen’s egg (tamago). It looks like a block of omelet but it is lighter, fluffier and tastier than any American omelet. Each sushi chef has their secret recipe, which often includes shrimp or fish broth, sugar and sake. The omelets are made in a special pan, in thin layers that are folded over one another. Good tamago, which is lightly brown on the outside but soft and supple on the inside, is time consuming to make and is considered a great way to tell how good the chef really is.
As in all Japanese cooking, the aesthetics of the food are at least as important as the taste. The fish is cut in just such a way and with just the right knife to reveal the beauty and texture of each part of the fish. Sushi is arranged in ways that mimic or call to mind natural settings. Nigiri is served in pairs, hoso-maki (thin nori wrapped sushi) is cut into six piece, and futo-maki (thick rolls) are cut into eight pieces.
But don’t let all of that tradition and complex knife skills deter you from making sushi at home. And don’t feel like you have to make it with raw fish, even though you can get good sushi grade fish in town (from Flying Fish, who also carries just about everything else you need for sushi), there are all kinds of things you can roll up in nori and rice.
Coming up with different fillings for your guests to roll is half the fun of having a roll your own sushi party (which, I found out while writing this article, is not just some American bastardization of the cuisine but something the Japanese invented). You can stick with the standards like cucumber, avocado, salmon and shrimp or you can go crazy and add ham and eggs or even bacon for a BLT roll. Make small amounts of different fillings and let your guests come up with their own combinations. Have some wasabi, different flavored sauces, and home made pickled ginger on hand as well.
However, the most important element for your sushi party is the rice. After all, sushi is about 80 percent rice so it better be good. The only bad sushi I’ve had has been because the rice was either flavorless or too wet or dry. Taking the time to make your sushi rice delicious will make anything you roll up in it divine.
The second half of the fun is, of course, eating all the great combinations that can be made with the ingredients you provide. But beware, they will probably all taste good and you’ll want to keep trying new ones until you are stuff. The nice thing about that is you don’t have to worry about dessert.
Sushi Rice (Sumeshi)
Makes about 4 cups
2 c. short grain sushi rice
3 c. cold water
3 T. rice vinegar
1 ½ T. sugar
1 t. salt
Place the rice in a fine mesh colander and run cold water over it while gently stirring the rice. When the water runs clear (about a minute) fan the rice up the sides of the colander set it aside to dry for 30 minutes.
Place the rice and water in a 2 quart saucepan with a tight fitting lid. Bring to a boil then reduce heat to medium for 5 minutes then down to very low for 15 minutes. Bring the heat back up to high for a minute until steam escapes the lid. Remove from heat and set aside to rest for 10 minutes.
Meanwhile heat the vinegar, sugar and salt together until the sugar and salt just dissolve.
Place the rice in a thin layer in a flat wooden bowl or glass tray that is slightly wetted. Slowly pour the vinegar mixture over the rice while folding it in and fanning it at the same time (it nice to have a third hand help at this point). Continue folding in the vinegar until it is well dispersed and the rice has cooled a bit. The individual grains should be coated and glossy. Use immediately or cover with a damp towel and use in the next hour or two. Sushi rice does not keep well and shouldn’t be made too far ahead of time.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Sunday, January 16, 2011
It's Better with Butter
Butter-just the word makes my mouth water. Visions of flaky piecrusts, fresh steamed vegetables glistening with that golden glaze, and shortbread melting in my mouth spring to mind when I think about it.
And butter is often on my mind during the holiday season. It’s hard to do without it. Sure, you can make cookies and cakes with oil or margarine but they won’t taste as good. You can construct sauces without it, but butter will enhance any of them. You can dip fresh baked bread in olive oil, but a pat of melting butter is so much better. And don’t even bother making caramel without this key ingredient.
Butter is an essential part of my winter cooking (I think all that fat helps keep me warm and happy through the cold, dark months). Our family used at least three pounds of the stuff to get us through Thanksgiving and I’m anticipating using at least that much making holiday gifts (the Nanaimo Bar recipe I’m making calls for over a pound!).
It is the chemical structure of butter that makes it so useful and delicious. Butter is a water-in-oil emulsion, the exact opposite of the cream it is made from, which is an oil-in-water emulsion. The fat crystals and globules throughout the structure make butter solid when refrigerated, soft at room temperatures, and meltingly delicious in your mouth or in your sauce pan. These three phases allow butter to serve the cook well.
Solid butter, when incorporated with flour in the correct way and at the correct temperature, can create pastries that are crumbly like scones, flakey like piecrusts, or laminar like puff pastry. Although butter is the more difficult of the fats used in pastry making, lard and vegetable shortening have higher melting points and lower moisture contents and are therefore less fussy to work with, it imparts that one-of-a-kind buttery flavor that no amount of fake-butter-flavored Crisco can reproduce.
Softened butter can be spread on bread, of course, but can also have flavorings kneaded into it. Incorporating stock, herbs, cheese or even seafood into softened butter creates a vehicle for flavor. The fat in the butter allows the added flavors to penetrate deep into whatever it is added to. Composed butters can be used to infuse sauces, flavor vegetables and meats, or just make that pat of butter by your bread a bit fancier.
Kneading equal weights of flour and soften butter together creates yet another tool for the cook. Beurre manie or kneaded butter is a simple and quick way to thicken stocks, sauces, or gravies. Having a batch on hand in my freezer has meant the difference between serving a runny sauce or one that has the strength to cling whatever it’s put on.
Melted butter has no end of uses. First and foremost, it is the go-to topping for a bowl of popcorn. Just a small drizzle on fresh vegetables brings out their flavor and a light coat of butter on fresh noodles is a simple treat.
Melted butter does have one downside. It can’t tolerate high heat. The milk solids will burn at temperatures over 250F. Sometimes this is used to advantage as in the case of browned butter sauce, which is just butter heated until those milk particles begin to brown and take on toasted flavor notes. But if you want to fry fish in butter you will need to clarify it.
Clarified butter is butter with the whey and casein protein particles removed. It’s basically pure butterfat and can be heated up to 400F without burning. Ghee is a form of clarified butter but better. The cream for making ghee is allowed to sour and produce lactic acids, which improves the flavor and quality. When it is heated, the milk solids are allowed to brown, which imparts more flavors and produces anti-oxidants to preserve it. Ghee is revered in India as a food fit for the gods.
Now that you are dreaming of all the ways to incorporate butter into your holiday cooking, what kind of butter should you use? All butter is not created equal and, lucky for us, we have a much wider range of butters to choose from today than just ten years ago.
If you can afford it, go for organic butter. You are guaranteed that the cows were not injected with genetically engineered growth hormones (r-BGH) that raise the level of pus in their milk (yuck!). Tillamook has taken a pledge to not use r-BGH so they are a good second choice if organic is out of your price range.
Cultured butter is now readily available. This is butter made to reproduce the old fashioned way of making butter. Milk used to have to sit out for a day or two for the cream to separate. During that time, lactic acid formed and slightly soured it. The resulting butter had a more complex flavor. Today, modern butter manufacturing adds bacterial cultures to help form the lactic acid. However, some use the cheap route and just add lactic acid to the finished product. Check the label to see which method is used.
European-style butter is butter with a higher butterfat content. This higher fat content is especially useful when making pastries where the extra water in regular butter can “glue” the pastry layers together rather than aiding in separating them.
Pastured butter is butter from cows that have been eating grass rather than hay and grain. A grass diet produces butter that is softer and higher in carotenoids, which produce a deep yellow. Pasture butter is ideal for spreading and making compound butters that will be used as spreads.
Whatever butter you choose, it will enhance your cooking, because, let’s face it, everything is better with butter.
Nanaimo Bars
adapted from Swilly’s Restaurant in Pullman, Wa.
Makes 1 9”x13” pan
Bottom Layer:
¾ c butter
1/3 c sugar
2 eggs
3/8 c cocoa powder
1 ¼ c vanilla
2 ½ c graham cracker crumbs
1 ¼ c coconut
2/3 c walnuts, coarsely chopped
Middle Layer:
1 c butter, cut into small pieces at room temperature
3/8 c cream
2 T. custard powder or vanilla pudding mix
4 c powdered sugar
Top Layer:
9 oz bittersweet chocolate
½ c butter
½ T. cream (more if needed)
Bottom Layer:
In a medium size saucepan, melt butter. Remove from heat and whisk in sugar and cocoa. Whisk in eggs and stir until custard-like. Whisk in vanilla.
In a large bowl, combine graham cracker crumbs, coconut and walnuts. Mix in chocolate mixture and stir until well blended and the consistency of dough. Press into a greased 9”x13” pan. Refrigerate until cool.
Middle Layer:
In a food processor, blend butter, custard powder and cream until smooth. Add the powdered sugar 1 c. at a time until well blended. Spread mixture over well-cooled bottom layer. Make sure the layer is smooth and flat. Refrigerate until firm.
Top Layer:
In a double boiler or thick-bottomed pan on low heat, melt chocolate, butter and cream until just melted. Mixture should be pourable but not runny. Add more cream if necessary to get the correct consistency. Pour over well-chilled middle layer. Spread evenly by tilting the pan to cover.
Refrigerate well then cut into squares.
And butter is often on my mind during the holiday season. It’s hard to do without it. Sure, you can make cookies and cakes with oil or margarine but they won’t taste as good. You can construct sauces without it, but butter will enhance any of them. You can dip fresh baked bread in olive oil, but a pat of melting butter is so much better. And don’t even bother making caramel without this key ingredient.
Butter is an essential part of my winter cooking (I think all that fat helps keep me warm and happy through the cold, dark months). Our family used at least three pounds of the stuff to get us through Thanksgiving and I’m anticipating using at least that much making holiday gifts (the Nanaimo Bar recipe I’m making calls for over a pound!).
It is the chemical structure of butter that makes it so useful and delicious. Butter is a water-in-oil emulsion, the exact opposite of the cream it is made from, which is an oil-in-water emulsion. The fat crystals and globules throughout the structure make butter solid when refrigerated, soft at room temperatures, and meltingly delicious in your mouth or in your sauce pan. These three phases allow butter to serve the cook well.
Solid butter, when incorporated with flour in the correct way and at the correct temperature, can create pastries that are crumbly like scones, flakey like piecrusts, or laminar like puff pastry. Although butter is the more difficult of the fats used in pastry making, lard and vegetable shortening have higher melting points and lower moisture contents and are therefore less fussy to work with, it imparts that one-of-a-kind buttery flavor that no amount of fake-butter-flavored Crisco can reproduce.
Softened butter can be spread on bread, of course, but can also have flavorings kneaded into it. Incorporating stock, herbs, cheese or even seafood into softened butter creates a vehicle for flavor. The fat in the butter allows the added flavors to penetrate deep into whatever it is added to. Composed butters can be used to infuse sauces, flavor vegetables and meats, or just make that pat of butter by your bread a bit fancier.
Kneading equal weights of flour and soften butter together creates yet another tool for the cook. Beurre manie or kneaded butter is a simple and quick way to thicken stocks, sauces, or gravies. Having a batch on hand in my freezer has meant the difference between serving a runny sauce or one that has the strength to cling whatever it’s put on.
Melted butter has no end of uses. First and foremost, it is the go-to topping for a bowl of popcorn. Just a small drizzle on fresh vegetables brings out their flavor and a light coat of butter on fresh noodles is a simple treat.
Melted butter does have one downside. It can’t tolerate high heat. The milk solids will burn at temperatures over 250F. Sometimes this is used to advantage as in the case of browned butter sauce, which is just butter heated until those milk particles begin to brown and take on toasted flavor notes. But if you want to fry fish in butter you will need to clarify it.
Clarified butter is butter with the whey and casein protein particles removed. It’s basically pure butterfat and can be heated up to 400F without burning. Ghee is a form of clarified butter but better. The cream for making ghee is allowed to sour and produce lactic acids, which improves the flavor and quality. When it is heated, the milk solids are allowed to brown, which imparts more flavors and produces anti-oxidants to preserve it. Ghee is revered in India as a food fit for the gods.
Now that you are dreaming of all the ways to incorporate butter into your holiday cooking, what kind of butter should you use? All butter is not created equal and, lucky for us, we have a much wider range of butters to choose from today than just ten years ago.
If you can afford it, go for organic butter. You are guaranteed that the cows were not injected with genetically engineered growth hormones (r-BGH) that raise the level of pus in their milk (yuck!). Tillamook has taken a pledge to not use r-BGH so they are a good second choice if organic is out of your price range.
Cultured butter is now readily available. This is butter made to reproduce the old fashioned way of making butter. Milk used to have to sit out for a day or two for the cream to separate. During that time, lactic acid formed and slightly soured it. The resulting butter had a more complex flavor. Today, modern butter manufacturing adds bacterial cultures to help form the lactic acid. However, some use the cheap route and just add lactic acid to the finished product. Check the label to see which method is used.
European-style butter is butter with a higher butterfat content. This higher fat content is especially useful when making pastries where the extra water in regular butter can “glue” the pastry layers together rather than aiding in separating them.
Pastured butter is butter from cows that have been eating grass rather than hay and grain. A grass diet produces butter that is softer and higher in carotenoids, which produce a deep yellow. Pasture butter is ideal for spreading and making compound butters that will be used as spreads.
Whatever butter you choose, it will enhance your cooking, because, let’s face it, everything is better with butter.
Nanaimo Bars
adapted from Swilly’s Restaurant in Pullman, Wa.
Makes 1 9”x13” pan
Bottom Layer:
¾ c butter
1/3 c sugar
2 eggs
3/8 c cocoa powder
1 ¼ c vanilla
2 ½ c graham cracker crumbs
1 ¼ c coconut
2/3 c walnuts, coarsely chopped
Middle Layer:
1 c butter, cut into small pieces at room temperature
3/8 c cream
2 T. custard powder or vanilla pudding mix
4 c powdered sugar
Top Layer:
9 oz bittersweet chocolate
½ c butter
½ T. cream (more if needed)
Bottom Layer:
In a medium size saucepan, melt butter. Remove from heat and whisk in sugar and cocoa. Whisk in eggs and stir until custard-like. Whisk in vanilla.
In a large bowl, combine graham cracker crumbs, coconut and walnuts. Mix in chocolate mixture and stir until well blended and the consistency of dough. Press into a greased 9”x13” pan. Refrigerate until cool.
Middle Layer:
In a food processor, blend butter, custard powder and cream until smooth. Add the powdered sugar 1 c. at a time until well blended. Spread mixture over well-cooled bottom layer. Make sure the layer is smooth and flat. Refrigerate until firm.
Top Layer:
In a double boiler or thick-bottomed pan on low heat, melt chocolate, butter and cream until just melted. Mixture should be pourable but not runny. Add more cream if necessary to get the correct consistency. Pour over well-chilled middle layer. Spread evenly by tilting the pan to cover.
Refrigerate well then cut into squares.
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