Fast Food Friday: Sushi

During Great Lent, James and I made our first attempt at making our own sushi, and last weekend we enjoyed making it with friends. We've definitely got room to improve as far as making beautiful rolls, but we've had a lot of fun making it. We think it's pretty delicious. In fact, we like our homemade as much as restaurant sushi. During Lent we really enjoyed it with a pot of jasmine tea, but now we're finding one of the things we like about it is it's so cool and refreshing.

It's certainly far more economical to make it than buy it now that we've got some supplies, too. We bought a mat to roll the sushi, nori sheets, wasabi powder, pickled ginger, some black sesame seeds, and sushi rice. The condiments will last a long time, and even the nori and rice are enough for a few meals. For fillings we've tried carrots, avocado, bell pepper, cucumber, steamed asparagus, mushrooms marinated in soy sauce and sesame oil, as well as shrimp and smoked salmon for the seafood eaters. I'm enjoying trying different combinations of fillings. I especially like asparagus and mushroom.

It's really pretty easy to do, and it makes a quick to prepare, almost no-cook dinner. It's a nice addition to our rotation of fasting meals. You cook the sushi rice, then spread it out on a plate, and sprinkle it with rice vinegar to cool and season it. Then you spread rice very thinly on the nori, add your fillings in a line, roll it up and slice it. I'm sure you can find a million tutorials and videos on how to make sushi, with much better advice than a novice like me can give, so give it a try.

Fast Food Friday (belated): Tostadas

OK, so I know it's Saturday, but here we are in the midst of the Apostle's Fast, so I thought I'd do a few fast food Friday posts. We had these for dinner last night, and this morning I realized they'd be a great food to write about. I thought about saving this for next Friday, but then I thought, why wait? Tostadas are one of my favorite summertime fasting dinners. We really enjoy these during the Dormition Fast when we have all those great summer vegetables, and we often eat them on Fridays throughout the summer.  They are super easy to make, and they are a great way to take advantage of bounty from the garden and farmer's market.

This is not so much a recipe as a process and list of suggestions. First, you need the shells. I make the tostada shells by baking corn tortillas. Lay as many as will fit on a baking sheet, bake for about 7 minutes in a 400 degree oven until they are good and crispy but not browned. You could do a few baking sheets worth at a time for a big family. I've done that before for company, but generally I do 5 or 6 for James and me.  If you want them to be pretty flat, you can flip them over halfway through. Do NOT forget you have them in the oven, and keep an eye on them because they burn easily if left too long. I've burnt many a tortilla by getting distracted! If I'm just making tostadas for one, I will stick two tortillas in the toaster oven. You can buy tostada shells, but they are more expensive than corn tortillas, and they are fried. If you make your own tortillas, go for it and do the whole thing from scratch. I mean to try that some time, but I've only ever made flour tortillas.

So, once you have your tostada shells, you need toppings. Here are my suggestions:

Beans: you can do refried, mashed, or just cooked or canned. We usually use pintos or black, sometimes refried, sometimes not.

Salsas: Whatever you like. In tomato season, we like homemade pico de gallo. We also like corn salsa. I prefer a chunky salsa for this, but I generally just use what I've got.

Grilled or roasted veggies: This is one of my favorite parts. We grill or roast squash, peppers, onions, mushrooms, tossed with some oil, lime juice, chile powder and cumin. Yum. You could do whatever vegetables you like, but that is my favorite combination. Cherry or grape tomatoes are good, too.

Other chopped vegetables: fresh tomato, corn off the cob, bell pepper, canned or fresh hot peppers/chiles of some kind (if you want some heat), lettuce, onion (green, red, sweet), olives, avocado

Guacamole

Seafood (if you are a fish eater): Grilled fish or shrimp, quality canned tuna

If it's not a fasting day, or you're not Orthodox: Shredded cheese, sour cream

And if you're not a vegetarian like me: shredded chicken or pork, grilled strips of beef

The tostadas pictured here are topped with refried pintos, shredded lettuce, corn salsa, and guacamole. These are from my lunch. Last night I had roasted veggies to top them, but we ate those all up! I think this is pretty kid-friendly, since you can put out a whole bunch of toppings and people can pick what they like. They are also good for eating outside, because they are messy!

The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

This was a childhood favorite of mine. There were a lot of things for me to identify with in this book.  I liked "imagining games better than anything," as Melanie says in the book, and I remember being very interested in ancient Egypt, so I loved their Egypt game.  The main characters are Melanie, her precocious, tag-along younger brother Marshall, and her new friend April. I identified with Melanie because I also have a younger brother who I was very close to growing up, and with April because I moved all the time as a kid, so I had a lot of sympathy for her as the new kid going through a rough transition.

In the story Melanie, April, and Marshall play an elaborate, imaginative game where they are ancient Egyptians in the unused backyard and shed of a curio shop in their neighborhood. As the story progresses, they bring more children into the game. Then something happens that halts their game. It's a pretty suspenseful mystery, as a matter of fact, and I had completely forgotten about that part. Another thing I had forgotten about is that it's beautifully illustrated by Alton Raible. Looking at the pictures again, I'm pretty sure I really liked them as a kid, too, because they're enchanting. They're clearly contemporaneous with the story which was originally published in 1967,  unlike the cover of my 1986 Scholastic copy. Other things worth noting are that it has a quite racially diverse cast of characters, and is set in a university town. I'm not sure if I realized as a kid that the book wasn't written at that time, but now I can see it's pretty emblematic of it's time. 

Upon re-reading I was surprised to realize I'm not sure if I've read any other works by Snyder. This is odd since as I kid if I found a book I liked, I'd usually read everything else I could find by that author. There's now a sequel to The Egypt Game that I'm curious to check out as well. Any recommendations for Snyder books I should read immediately?

5. Make cheese--Check

For my first-ever venture into cheese-making, I decided to try one of the most simple cheeses. I made paneer. It has only two ingredients. Milk and some kind of acid with which to curdle it. Following this recipe, I used lime juice. I was amazed at how easy it was. You bring the milk to a boil, add the lime juice, stir and cook for about 5 minutes, strain out the curds, press them into a ball, drain it for an hour, and then chill it. I will definitely make this again, and I think after the Apostle's Fast, I will try my hand at some other cheeses as well.

The only downside was that it was that it took a long time! I knew it would, and I planned for the draining and chilling, but I didn't take into account how long it would take to bring a half-gallon of milk to a boil. I did it over medium heat because I didn't want to scorch it or let it boil over, and it took about 45 minutes!  Other than that the several hours were no big deal, since they weren't hands on. I didn't have to be around for the draining or chilling.

I used the cheese to make palak paneer, (spinach curry with cheese) which is one of my favorite foods. You can see the chunks of cheese in the curry above. I love Indian food, but I for some reason I don't cook it all that often.  The palak paneer was delicious, and I was so proud of making it totally from scratch. I kind of melded a few different recipes on the fly, so I'm not sure how authentic it was, but no matter since it was yummy. I didn't take notes, so I don't really have a recipe to share. Next time I make it I'll try to pay attention to how I'm doing it. I actually used chard instead of spinach, because that's what they had at the farmer's market. The milk for the cheese came from the local dairy, so the two main ingredients for this international dish were locally produced. I'm excited that we're coming into the time of year when we have an abundance of fresh local vegetables.

24. Get some glass dishes for taking my lunch--Check

So, it may seem that I am failing miserably with goals 32 (Continue posting at least once a week on average) and 33 (Track my progress with this list) from my Birthday List, but I'm actually making some progress with some of the other goals. And in order to live up to goal number 33 (and help fulfill goal 32), I'm posting my first update.

I got some glass dishes to take my lunch to work in. Two of them are pictured above. I actually got them over a month ago--my mom gave four to me as a birthday gift. I'm loving them so far. One of my favorite things about them is that it's so easy to see what's in them. They look really pretty in the refrigerator, and I can tell at a glance what leftovers they contain. I think they'll really help prevent food waste. I actually now want to get some more, but this is a great start.  It's nice to know I'm not imbibing plastic with my lunch.

I've been trying to reduce the amount of plastic I bring into my life for a long time now, because of concerns about how it may affect our health, the effects of all the waste plastic on animals and the ecosystem, and the depletion of petroleum resources from its production. I go through periods where I'm more successful at keeping it at bay, and then I tend to backslide as I find myself busy and seduced by the convenience of plastic. I like to read  Fake Plastic Fish when I need some inspiration in this area.

I'm working on making bulk buying an ingrained habit so that I won't be so likely to slide back into buying packaged things, and I'm just generally trying to be more aware about the plastic I'm buying.  I've just started really trying to reduce the existing plastic in my house, especially in my kitchen. Michelle mentioned recently how frustrating it is that plastic is so pervasive, and I definitely know what she means.  My glass containers even have plastic lids, but plastic lidded glass seems like the best option for me. I need dishes with leak-proof lids that I can use for transporting, heating and serving my lunch. Bringing my lunch in stainless steel containers would mean transferring the food to other dishes to heat them in the microwave at work. I know myself well enough to know that would mean that I'm less likely to use them than the glass dishes I'm so enjoying.