Food Prints of Japanese Dining

- sushi rice (see Food Print 85)
- trout (or salmon) roe, as much as you like
- shiso leaf
- pickled ginger
- wasabi
- soy sauce

Today I like to post something so very simple that it is most easy to prepare and, if you like trout roe, outstandingly tasty.

Prepare the sushi rice as usual. Place it in a bowl and top it with trout roe. Cut a shiso leaf in stripes and arrange around the roe.

Enjoy with pickeled ginger, wasabi and soy sauce to your liking.

Itadakimasu!

P.S.: Thank you for now over 8,000 clicks

Something similar with some more toppings I enjoyed - again - during my recent trip to Japan, overlooking Tokyo Station.

- sushi rice (see Food Print 85)
- dried nori sea weed
- whatever raw fish, surimi, cucumber, avocado, carrots or daikon sprouts you like
- tamagoyaki (see Food Print 22)
- pickled ginger
- wasabi
- soy sauce

In Japanese, "te" means hand, what makes "temaki" a hand roll: You roll them with your hands without the help of a maki su (bamboo mat). The typical characteristics of temaki are their cone-shaped form and the fact that their ingredients are spilling out at the wide end. The cones are about ten centimetres long.

Temaki are easy to prepare and therefore ideal to be done at home. You can also close your sushi menu at a restaurant by ordering one or two temaki with the ingredients you like most. For me that would be chuutoro (medium fatty tuna)! Recently, temaki restaurants became popular, where you get a box of rice, nori sheets and sushi toppings to create temaki by yourself.

For doing so you can select all the ingredients you would also use for nigiri or maki. If you feel like it, you could also experiment with grilled chicken or beef, pickled vegetables, cream cheese or ham.

Cut a nori sheet in halves; if it is not crispy any more, heat it in the oven for 5 minutes. Place about the same amount of rice on top as you would use for a nigiri. Add a selection of toppings, maybe decorate with some daikon sprouts and eventually roll your cone.

Make sure to eat temaki quickly after they got prepared. That way the nori remains crispy. If you wait for too long, the sea wheat could absorb moisture from the fillings and becomes somewhat difficult to bite. This is also the reason why you will often find the nori sealed into plastic separately from the rice and its fillings when buying pre-made or take-away temaki or onigiri (rice dumplings) in Japan.

Itadakimasu!

- sushi rice (see Food Print 85)
- dried nori sea weed
- whatever raw fish, surimi, cucumber, avocado or carrots you like
- tamagoyaki (see Food Print 22)
- pickled ginger
- wasabi
- soy sauce

Next to nigiri, maki might be the second best known sushi. While nigiri normally come only with one kind of topping, maki can combine different kinds of ingredients; for the maki shown above, I used tuna and steamed and pickled carrots. Vegetable maki may serve you as an intermezzo to clear your taste between two raw fish nigiri.

Maki are rolled - which is the precise translation of the word "maki". To do so, you need a maki su, a special bamboo mat you will get in well sorted supermarkets, Asia shops or online.

There are different kinds of maki: either thin (hoso-maki) or thick (futo-maki), or you can do them inside-out like California rolls or Rainbow rolls - the later are more American than Japanese, but getting more and more popular even in the land of the rising sun.

To roll your sushi is actually trickier than you may think. First of all, cut in halves a square sheet of nori. If you stored the nori for some time, it might have soaked humidity. If so, heat the nori by waving it over the open flame of your stove. Afterwards, place the nori on the maki su.

The next tricky thing is the rice itself. Make sure to prepare it as explained in Food Print 85. Be extra sure the rice is not too wet, because if so the nori will soak water and lose its crispiness - and wet nori really is not a culinary sensation at all! Top the nori with sushi rice, about one centimetre thick. Keep a free stripe at the upper and lower ends. You will later need these rice-free parts to close your maki.

Now, it is topping time! You can use a rich variety of ingredients, like raw fish, surimi, tamagoyaki , cucumber, avocado or carrots. Cut them into stripes and place them close together in a line parallel to the rice-free strips. If you use raw fish, season it with a little wasabi. You can use toasted sesame seeds to season vegetable maki.

Do not use too many ingredients at a time, or your hoso-maki will get too thick. To make sure the fillings will be in the middle of your later maki, place the ingredients above the first third of the nori sheet.

Carefully roll the maki su with both hands and form a cylinder shaped roll. Press the roll softly with your hands to make it stick together.

Take a sharp knife and wet it in a bowl with vinegar, water and a slice of lemon. Knock the knife’s handle onto the table, so the water-vinegar drops will disperse equally on the blade.

Cut the roll in halves, place the halves next to each other and cut three pieces off each half.

Enjoy your maki zushi with some drops of soy sauce and pickled ginger.

Itadakimasu!

P.S.: Thank you for 7,000 clicks! I would love to know how many of you I have inspired to test one or the other Japanese dish by yourself.

Tuna & salmon nigiri zushi

- sushi rice (see Food Print 85)
- whatever raw fish, shrimps or clams you like
- tamagoyaki (see Food Print 22)
- pickled ginger
- wasabi
- soy sauce

If you think about sushi, nigiri zushi might go through your mind. As a fast and tasty snack they are popular in Japan since over 200 years: A rice dumpling topped with raw fish - sounds easy, again it is not.

So far, every Japanese friend told me that they would never do it at home. Nigiri zushi is something you would typically enjoy at a restaurant, prepared and presented by an itamae, an experienced sushi chef.

Still, it can be fun to try nigiri zushi yourself. Just be warned, that your sushi might not look as beautiful as those of an itamae.

Prepare your rice as explained in Food Print 85.

As for the toppings (neta), you could use all kinds of sashimi fresh raw fish, clams, shrimps, tamagoyaki or even raw meat. Prepare your neta by cutting half-finger thick slices of fish the way, that the fat lines go more or less vertical through the slices.

Ebi nigiri zushi

Tamagoyaki nigiri zushi

The next challenge will be the forming of the rice. Wet your hands well, otherwise the rice will only stick on your fingers but never together! Take about two tablespoons of rice in your hand and smoothly form it by closing your fingers. Press strong enough for the rice to keep together, but it should be still fluffy, not rock hard.

Now, put a little bit of wasabi on the lower side of the fish and place it on your thumb sized rice. Dip your sushi in soy sauce and enjoy together with pickled ginger to clear your taste between different pieces of sushi.

By the way, you may eat nigiri zushi with your hands. Do not hesitate to do so, if you have problems to grab them with chop sticks.

Itadakimasu!

Beef & tuna nigiri zushi

Beef nigiri zushi

- sushi rice (see Food Print 85)
- whatever raw fish you like
- fish roe
- tamagoyaki (see Food Print 22)
- pickled ginger
- wasabi

It is time to combine our well fanned sushi rice with the variety of toppings (neta) suitable for sushi.

The easiest, fastest and most filling way to prepare sushi is chirashi zushi. For this dish, fill a bowl with sushi rice and decorate with all the ingredients you can get and like. Best to get in western countries would be salmon, tuna, cuttlefish, scallops (but they need to be extremely fresh to be eaten row!), shrimps, surimi and fish roe. Ask your fishmonger for sashimi quality.

If you plan to serve many people, you could arrange the ingredients on top of the rice within the hangiri, like shown above. Normally, you would prepare a bowl of chirashi zushi for each guest, garnished with maybe thin sliced daikon, shiso leaves, cucumber, pickled ginger and wasabi.

There are two traditional ways to prepare a chirashi zushi. Either you only use uncooked ingredients, what would make it an edomae (Edo style) chirashi zushi. If you choose to mix the sushi rice with sashimi and cooked ingredients like tamagoyaki, you would end up with a gomokuzushi or Kansai style chirashi zushi.

Every chef, every region and every season has its own specialities. So if you go to Japan, have a close look for the diversity of chirashi zushi.

You will not be surprised, that you will get high quality chirashi zushi even at the train stations of Nippon!

Itadakimasu!

- 3 cups short grained rice (will be enough for two hungry sushi fans)
- 50 ml rice vinegar
- 1 tablespoon sugar (could be more, but too sweet for my taste)
- 1 teaspoon salt
- (2 teaspoons sake, if you like to experiment)

When I grew up, nobody in Germany knew sushi. These days everyone does. Raw fish is the stereotype of Japanese food and during the last decade one of Japans most successful cultural exports. We all know sushi. Do we?

We don’t. There are so many ways to prepare and serve sushi that you could re-discover this dish day by day: maki, nigiri, California rolls, chirashi zushi, temaki, inari, oshi zushi... There is not "the" sushi at all. Most notably, sushi isn’t one thing: raw fish.

Sushi is chilled, vinegared and sugared rice, accompanied by a rich diversity of ingredients; a lot of them raw fish, but also tamagoyaki, raw meat or vegetables. I love my sushi most, when the rice is still slightly warm.

It is and art by itself to prepare the rice in the right way. Every family and restaurant in Japan has its own recipe, its favourite type of rice (or even a mix of different types), its way of washing, steaming, cooling and spicing it. It is unbelievable for us in the West that budding sushi chefs spend a year learning mainly how to wash the white grains in the perfect way.

Well, I did not. And I still rely on the help of my Japanese friend, who will, I am sure, read this Food Print especially critically! Anyhow, we cannot waste time to prepare our own sushi, so we must try and try again.

Let us get started with our rice. Wash it carefully while massaging it with your hands. The draining water should be crystal clear, what will take you quite a while to achieve. Give yourself 5 to 8 minutes for this - and be happy with the result or you will go to bed starving... If you have a lot of time, let the rice drain and soak for one hour. I never did.

Steam the rice in your rice cooker. In the meantime, mix rice vinegar with sugar and salt (and sake, if you like). This is where the originally Chinese dish got its name from, as sushi literally means "sour tasting", although in the beginning this sour taste was not achieved by vinegar but by fermenting fish that was later eaten without the rice. In the following centuries Japanese chefs started to add vinegar to get a better taste of fish and rice. Only in the 19th century sushi became the fast food style dish it is now internationally known as.

Circle Sushi at Tsukiji Fishmarket in Tokyo

Next you need a "hangiri" and a "shamoji". Hangiri is the name of the wooden, flat-bottom barrel you cool and spice the rice in. Place it under water before you put the rice in. If you do not have a hangiri, use any other non-metallic bowl or plate. The shamoji is the flat spoon like tool you need to stir the rice with. A wooden or plastic kitchen spoon will also do the job. Oh, and you need one more thing: a fan. You really do!

After steaming the rice, let it cool down for ten minutes. Then, transfer the rice in the hangiri and quickly stir it with the shamoji while you fan the rice; even better, if you have a sous-chef at hand for the later (many thanks to my mother! I would only be half that much interested in cooking without her long year outstanding example).

The best way to "stir" the rice is to plough through it in vertical and horizontal lines before you shift it; even better slightly through it up a little. Your final goal is to cool the rice, to separate the gluey grains and to make them shin. Mix in the vinegar while stirring.

You might feel a little silly by fanning the rice. Don’t worry, you will get used to it! If you receive curious questions, why the hell you are doing this, simply reply "To make the rice shin" - and enjoy your guest’s puzzled glance. You should worry more about your wrists, because stirring and fanning the rice will take you a good ten minutes.

After this process you should have more or less perfect "shari" - the rice you can now use for adventurous combinations of toppings and fillings. We will see in the following Food Prints, what we could do with our sushi rice.

No "Itadakimasu!" today; who would like to eat the plain sushi rice, if you could combine it with salmon, tuna or tamagoyaki?

- 200g cuttlefish (row)
- 3 tablespoons spring fish roe
- wasabi
- soy sauce

Here is another sashimi dish, roe fish at its best. I had it many times at our local Japanese restaurant until the chef retired in 2010. Now, I have to help me myself!

The dishes name means, what it is: cuttlefish (ika) mixed with spring fish roe (tobiko).

Wash fresh cuttlefish, kitchen paper dry it and cut it in stripes. Mix the fish together with the tiny orange spring fish roe and a little wasabi. Sprinkle with few drops of soy sauce and enjoy along with a cold beer.

Thank you, Kamijo-san, for this perfect isakaya-style appetiser. I love it!

Itadakimasu!

P.S.: Thank you for over 5,000 clicks within the first year of this blog!

For 3 servings:
- 3 cups rice
- 300 g rump steaks
- 3 small peppers (pimientos de padrón)
- 3 slices lotus roots
- 2 shallots
- chives
- pepper, salt
- teriyaki sauce
- soy sauce
- vegetable oil for frying

After this third donburi in a row I promise to change the topic with the next Food Print. But first check out the one your Kitchen Ninja will get famous with! In November I got a message from a journalist working for the German cooking magazine and webpage EatSmarter, where I posted a recipe. First they wanted to print this recipe, later they got another idea: They planned a story about cooking men for their March issue and asked me, if I would like to take part. After hearing the articles headline I proudly agreed: "Kitchen Heroes"!

To prepare something many Germans could like and easily cook their self, I choose this sutekidon (steak donburi), a bowl of rice with best beef on top accompanied by some vegetables and teriyaki souce.

As always, carefully wash the rice. A dear Japanese friend told me to even massage the rice, so it gets equally cleaned. (She was starving after long days working on an exhibition, so suggesting me this proved her to be a true hero by herself as it now took me even longer to produce my sushi... I apologies!). Cook the rice in the steamer or a pot.

Wash peppers and chives, cut shallots and chives in small pieces. You can buy the lotus roots pre-cooked, sliced and most times frozen in well sorted Asia stores. I got mine - friends of this page will not be surprised - from Narita Airport. A colleague of mine went on a business trip to Tokyo and was kind enough to provide me with some Japanese specialties. What a happy man I am!

High heat oil in a pan. Season the beef with pepper and salt from both sides. Fry the meat on both sides for a minute, then turn down the heat to medium and continue frying each side for another three minutes until medium rare. For the last three minutes add shallots and peppers.

In the meantime, heat little oil in a second pan to medium heat. Fry the lotus from both sides until they start turning golden and season the wheel shaped vegetables with little pepper and soy sauce.

Arrange the sliced beef together with the vegetables on top of the rice, add teriyaki sauce and garnish with chives.

Itadakimasu!

- 1 cup rice
- 1 onion
- 1 red pepper
- 1 egg
- 1 chicken breast filet
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon teriyaki sauce
- pepper, salt, shichimi
- vegetable oil for frying

Here is another donburi style dish I cooked last weekend. When January turns really nasty with cold storms and never ending rain like it does in Germany these days, there is nothing more pleasing than a hot bowl of rice with tasty toppings - accompanied by a steaming miso soup!

As always, wash the rice for about four minutes before cooking it in your rice steamer or a pot.

While doing so, peel the onion and cut in small stripes. Wash the pepper, remove the stones and also cut in small pieces. Wash and kitchen paper dry the chicken breast filet before season it with pepper and little salt from both sides. In a cup, stir the egg with a tablespoon of soy sauce.

Heat a little vegetable oil to medium high in a large frying pan and fry the onion. Add the pepper a little later, season with pepper and salt.

After three minutes, add the steamed rice. Turn up the heat and stir fry the rice for about five minutes until it starts turning slightly golden. Then turn down the head and pour the egg over the rice. Continue stirring from time to time until the egg got firm.

In the meantime, heat a little oil in a second pan quite high. Fry the chicken for one minute on each side, than turn down the heat to medium and fry each side for another three minutes while covering the pan. Add the teriyaki sauce at the end of the process.

Put the rice in a bowl and arrange the sliced chicken on top. If you like, spice with some hot shichimi (sometimes too hot for me ).

Itadakimasu!

- 1 cup rice
- ½ aubergine
- 4 mini peppers (pimientos de padrón)
- 50 g daikon (or white garden radish)
- 2 tablespoons soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon sake
- pepper, salt, sugar
- toasted sesame seeds
- sesame or vegetable oil for frying

Happy new year to all my readers! After maybe too rich and too many Christmas dinners in December it is time to return to the healthy food of Japan. These days I enjoy simple donburi recipes like this one:

Wash and steam your rice.

Wash and dry the peppers and avocado. Cut the latter in cubes. Peel the daikon and grind it into a bowl.

Heat the oil in a frying pan to medium heat. First fry the aubergine from all sides. About three minutes later add the peppers. Let both fry for another two minutes while stirring. Season the vegetables with salt, pepper and a little sugar.

Now add radish, soy sauce and sake. Keep stir frying until the sauce equally covers aubergine and peppers.

Place the rice in a bowl. Top it with the vegetable goulash and garnish with sesame seeds.

Itadakimasu!