Sushi, Miso, et al

Time to make sushi again! We're still struggling with rolling, but it seems to be getting marginally better.

I think it is time to take a class on this. PCC seems to have one, as does Uwajimaya, but I'm favoring the one at Culinary Communion - the wine class there was pretty fun, most of their classes are very hands-on and end up with everyone feasting on the giant spread that was just cooked up. Sounds delightful :)

I guess sushi-grade fish is pretty rare commodity in the grocery stores - the last time we wanted to make sushi, we got tuna from Whole Foods - it was amazing, but that was all they had! This time we wanted more variety, so we marched off to that asian food museum of sorts in SoDo. Uwajimaya has this wide spread of sushi-grade fish, so we ended up picking up tuna, salmon and yellow tail. As we started cutting up the fish for the rolls, we discovered that Whole Foods (more popularly known as Whole Paycheck) is pricey for a reason - quality. The tuna we had got there last time was a dream to cut up - like running a knife through butter. But this fish felt a lot denser, and the corners were somewhat leathery. Oh well! The rolls did turn out pretty tasty, but we might be scouting around some more for the perfect sushi-grade fish.

We figured a miso soup would go well with the sushi, we used a recipe out of this awesome Vegetarian Basics cookbook. I'll dig up the recipe and post it in a bit :)

Sushi time - Aoki

We've been lusting for sushi for a while now, but have been too lazy to make 'em rolls as yet. It was a nice evening, so we wandered around Cap'Hill and finally ended up at Aoki (the only decent sushi place we know on the hill right now).

So, it was .... "somewhat" decent, but barely. Actually, I think our first trip there was a lot better than this one. The edamame was weird - the shell kept peeling off in layers making it really hard to eat the peas. Quite irritating. The menu looked pretty good, so we ended up ordering these:

Spicy white tuna rolls - a variation! finally!! This was probably the best of the sushi we had that night. The fish was really tender, almost creamy, but definitely not spicy.
Broadway rolls - with salmon, alfalfa sprouts and some kind of roe - a little too smoky for us.
Veggie futomaki - this was really, really weird. Firstly, each roll was *huge* - about 3 mouthfuls. And it had waaaaay too much of rice in it, and was kind of dry.
Unagi - apparently decent, but not amazing
Spider rolls - these looked pretty good, and I guess they were :)

A decent experience, but there's got to be better sushi in Seattle! Or maybe we hit Aoki on an off-day!

International Potluck Night

a.k.a. - Serious food orgy! :)

Waaaay overdue post! A few weeks ago, I think Autumn and Lisa came up with this idea of doing a potluck where we all cooked food from cuisines that we hadn't really cooked much from before. Such a great idea. So we planned it out, May 19th was the day - at Daria's place, perfect way to warm her new house (and take her cute kitchen apart! :))

This is how we did it: each person/couple wrote out a country on a scrap of paper and we then drew lots. Daria got Vietnam, T&A got Russia, C&L - Costa Rica, A&J - Indonesia, us - Japan. And Jeremy picked Switzerland for dessert (apparently his initial choice - Australia is not sweet-friendly! :) and we picked Italy.

It was fun! And super yummy! And we kind of ended up with a good assortment of food. We tried to replicate the famous Dark Army from Vij as the drink of the eve. It turned out pretty decent, but could be better.

Basic Recipe:
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A shot each of lemon-ginger juice, simple syrup, mango juice, lime juice. Muddle these up with 1-1.5 shots of amber rum. Serve on ice. Sprinkle with a pinch of freshly ground garam masala. *hic*!

We started off noshing on these yummy baked plantains with guacamole and a blackbean dip (Costa Rica). The Russian entree was beety borscht along with this dark rye-like bread (lame! I've already forgotten what it actually had!). The borscht was really flavorful and smooth. The Vietnamese salad was awesome - it had mangoes, it *had* to be awesome! :) The noodle salad was super yummy too - the spicy limey dressing was seriously tasty - I was ready to drink it up! The tilapia on a bed of rice/beans/oranges/veggies was really light and flavorful.

And we made sushi - our first attempt! Obviously, spicy tuna rolls (we couldn't really find any other sushi grade fish at Whole Foods!). The tuna was so tasty - almost melting in the mouth. We marinated it in a sauce of the Snappy Dragon spicy sauce (*so* good!) along with a little wasabi. After marinating for a few hours, we rolled it with scallions, avocados and some stealth wasabi. The rolls came out looking *okay*, they definitely got better as we rolled more. And Pupp's rolling was *way* better than mine! :) But it was fun, we loved it and we'll do it again!

Dessert was this great chocolate cake with a mop of frosting - very yummy! We made this Cassata alla Siciliana - it was a serious flop! *so* sad! Firstly, the pound cake from Whole Foods was awful - dense and lifeless. And we could not find any candied fruit, so we used chopped dried fruits - NOT the same. *bleh*. I'll have to rework this recipe sometime.

Anyway, Daria's house was well-warmed (and a minor mess!). *happy*

Chiso - so good!

We hit Chiso in Fremont last night for some yummy sushi. And some yummy cocktails -they have a great ginger-pear martini and a killer mojito. We also sampled some decent sake - the nigori is the first unfiltered sake I've ever had - it was milky and reminded us of ouzo (which made us go 'Opa!' as we drank it, much to the amusement of people around us :))

We started with a large order of edamame - it was a seriously large bowlful and took us some effort to finish it off :) *so* good!

Obviously, we had to eat the spicy tuna roll - very good. The tuna was super tender and very flavorful. The negihama (yellowtail and green onions) was great - a first for me, I really want to try the yellowtail nigiri now! The futo maki was delicious - the gourd was a lot tastier than I expected. Apparently, the maguro and spider rolls were pretty happy too.

I just checked out the menu and they seem to have a pretty large non-sushi menu too. Can't wait to head back!