Veggie Lady

Fancy Sushi

 

I almost forgot about this!

I did make fancy sushi, as I'd intended. It was actually really good, I would probably rate it as the tastiest sushi I've made.

I made up a few recipes for ingredients, to try some different things. On the PPK they recommended using tempeh in sushi, so I made a vegan sauce with some veganaise, tomato puree and (vegan) worcester sauce, mixed it with tempeh then stuffed it into sushi with avocado and cucumber - very nice.

Also marinaded some shitake mushrooms with sugar, mirin and tamari soy sauce, then lightly fried them together and rolled with cucumber. Again, this tasted nice but was also quite strong!

I filled the other rolls with various raw veggies, and also made a little wasabi mayonnaise (vegan style) to put in the rolls with the raw vegetables. T'was lovely: I'm not normally a fan of wasabi but the mayo certainly cooled it down a lot!

I cut these at jaunty angles, as per the PPK video, and they did look really good on the plate when they were sliced like that.


Mmmm, sushi. I could eat some right now...

Vegetarian Sushi

As promised, here's a little post about Vegetarian sushi.

I love sushi. I could eat it every day and I don't think I would ever tire of it. It's just the tastiest food ever, it feels healthy and it fills you up.

Sushi in Japanese refers to the vinegared sticky rice that is served. In the West we commonly use sushi as an umbrella term for everything that the rice is used in, so we just say sushi when talking about nigiri, maki, etc.

It's a common misconception that you need fish for sushi, but this is absolutely not the case. You can use fish as an ingredient with the rice, but it's the rice that's the important bit! I tell you this only because, as a vegetarian, I get people asking me why I eat sushi when I don't eat fish. T'ain't fish. Let them know!

Anyway, minor rant over, back to delicious food. I generally make maki-zushi, as I love the taste of the nutrient rich nori sea vegetable with the rice.

We buy Clearspring producs for sushi - they're all marked vegan, are often organic and are very tasty. I like to make sure we have nice organic Shoyu (soy sauce) for dipping, as it really does taste better than the soy sauce you typically get in supermarkets.

I like to make Futomaki (nori rolls) and Uramaki (inside out nori rolls). Futomaki I find easier to make, but the Uramaki is always tasty and worth the extra effort.

I use all sorts of raw ingredients for sushi. I particularly love the combination of red pepper, avocado and cashew nuts, and tend to make Futomaki with these ingredients in them, however i like to combine sweet potato, carrots, peppers, cucumber, spinach, asparagus etc. Because I make my sushi vegan (so we can both eat it!) I no longer add cream cheese or anything, but back when I did I loved the combination of cream cheese and lightly fried mushrooms together.

After watching the Post Punk Kitchen video I really want to try making some tempeh sushi - I think I'm going to give it a try tomorrow night. I'll post a photo if it's successful!

Have a look at Wikipedia's entry on sushi to learn a bit more.

Post Punk Kitchen - Episode 1

I'm still feeling a bit ill, but thought I would share the very first episode of the Post Punk Kitchen with you! These are a couple of great vegan chefs - my boyfriend bought Isa Chandra Moskowitz's book "Vegan With a Vengeance" several months ago, and it has some really interesting recipes in it. Anyway, here they show you how to make vegan sushi (my favourite food, more about that later this week!) and cupcakes... Enjoy!