Adventures in Asian cuisine

This year, I have been exploring the creation of some Asian-style food in the kitchen. It started with a request from Brian for some dumplings, which I made with a traditional filling of ground meat and hand-formed dumpling wrappers. Those wrappers take some time! Afterwards, Brian said what he really wanted were dumplings filled with vegis, so I started looking around for another recipe. I found one, but decided to use wrappers from the store, to save time. I actually got egg roll wrappers, and we have had vegi-filled egg rolls a couple times. I even instructions for baking them instead of frying. (I fry food very infrequently, so I am not very good at it. And it is such a messy process!)

Anyway, boiling the dumplings got me thinking about getting a steamer, since that is another popular way to cook them. I ordered a bamboo steamer from Amazon (thanks Rick and Karen!). The steamer arrived a couple days ago, and I am excited to try it soon.

Another Asian food I was interested in learning about was sushi. I ordered a few more essential supplies (sushi rolling mat, bamboo rice paddle, seaweed sheets) again from Amazon (again thanks!), and tried it out. My first batch was just vegis, so I could try to get down the rolling motion. I've read a lot about how difficult it is to prepare the rice, but I didn't think it was any more difficult than regular rice. (I know many people who find regular rice difficult too, but I have a lot of practice.) The main difference is that once the rice is cooked, you mix it with a seasoned vinegar and flip it with your rice paddle until it cools down a bit. The rolling mat makes forming the sushi rolls relatively easy. I had some difficulty spreading rice to the very edge of the seaweed sheets, so the end pieces didn't always turn out. Overall though, it seemed to be a good first attempt.

Sushi: first batch. They are all vegi, except for a few at the top, which have some imitation crab. While the crab is made of another fish, it is cooked, so I thought it would be fine for the first try. I really like how the red pepper looks. The sprouts were not very good (in my opinion), and they made it difficult to form a tight roll.

In an attempt to get Brian to appreciate the taste of sushi, I dressed them up with a little soy sauce, some spicy mayo, and some french fried onions. Also, we had some very tasty pickled ginger (the pink stuff on the left).

I made a second batch of sushi today. I found a place with sushi-grade fish, and I got a small piece of salmon to try. (I will be able to tell you in about 24 hours if their fish really was sushi grade, but it looked and smelled fine.) The avocado I had on hand was pretty soft, so these look a bit more messy. Still, it was quite tasty. I managed to get some wasabi for the second batch, which is something Brian enjoyed (I was pretty sure he would, since he loves horseradish). I also tried an inside-out roll (rice on the outside, seaweed on the inside), which didn't turn out very well. I guess I need more practice. (L to R): 1 is salmon, cucumber, and scallions; 2 is salmon and scallions; 3 is avocado, cucumber, carrot, and scallions; 4 is like 3 but with extra wasabi.