The Art of Sushi - My Very First Attempt
16 September 2008
This time I had no time to go and buy fresh fish, but I had several vegetables in the fridge, so my first ever sushi became to be battle-ship sushi (i.e., the ones with the seaweed wrapped around) with sesame-aubergine-caviar (which, despite the name, has of course nothing to do with fish roe, but merely refers to the puree taken out of oven-baked aubergines).
So quite an unusual combination to begin with, and my amateurish tinkering would probably have given any sushi chef a heart attack. But the result was undeniably tasty.
Sesame-Aubergine-Caviar Sushi
| for approx. 8 pieces |
for the topping |
| 2 Asian-style little aubergines
(or 1 relatively small "western" one) |
| 1 dent of garlic |
| some olive oil for frying |
| 1 tablespoon of ground white sesame |
| 2 teaspoons of whole white sesame seeds |
| juice of 1/2 yuzu (or lime) |
| some soy sauce (to taste) |
| a dash of dark sesame oil |
| some wasabi paste (to taste) |
| leaves of nori seaweed to be cut into 8 3x16cm strips |
| some spring onions to garnish |
for the rice |
| 100g uncooked Japanese round-grain rice (= 1 unit) |
| 1 ¼ units of water |
| ¼ unit of Japanese rice vinegar |
| 1 1/2 teaspoons of fine white sugar |
| 1/2 teaspoon of table salt |
| optional: 1 1/2 teaspoons of black sesame seeds |
First of all, start preparing the sushi rice: [how to make sushi rice]. In addition to the usual salt and sugar, add some black sesame seeds to the sushi vinegar before mixing it into the rice, which will give it a nice nutty touch.
For the filling, cut the aubergines in half, then make some cuts into the flesh from the inside of each half, but without cutting through the skin. Just very slightly salt them, and when some water comes out wipe it off with some kitchen paper. Heat some olive oil in a frying pan, peel and mash the dent of garlic and fry it slightly. Before the garlic changes its colour, add the aubergines with their inside down. Sauté them very briefly until they get just slightly browned, then turn them round and roast them a bit from the outside, too.
Take the aubergines out of the pan, wrap each half in aluminum foil, and bake them in the oven, pre-heated at 200°C, for about 30 minutes. (If you use large aubergines instead of the tiny Asian ones, the cooking time will of course be somewhat longer.) Take them out of the oven and unwrap them. Once they have cooled down enough you don’t burn your fingers, scratch the flesh out of the skin with a spoon, put it in a mixing bowl and mash it further with the back of a fork.
Add the ground and the whole white sesame seeds as well as the yuzu (or lime) juice and season to taste with soy sauce and a dash of sesame oil. If the spread seems too liquid, just add some more ground sesame seeds, which should make it more creamy.
To form the battleship sushi, first cut the leaves of nori seaweed into strips of about 3x16cm. Prepare a bowl of water with a dash of vinegar, and dip your hands in it before shaping the rice into hand-sized, oval-shaped balls (without the vinegar water, the rice will just stick to your fingers and it will be very hard to shape it at all). Wrap a strip of nori seaweed once around each rice ball, and use an extra grain of rice to make it stick together at the overlapping end. The rice should occupy about half the height of the seaweed strip surrounding it, leaving space for the filling.
Spread a little bit of wasabi paste on each rice ball, make sure they all firmly stick to the nori, and finally fill them up with the sesame-aubergine-caviar. To garnish, sprinkle some further sesame seeds and a few slices of spring onion on top.
Don't prepare battleship sushi too long in advance – the nori seaweed might get too soaked!
| Suggestions to Combine |
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