Sushi for Noobs

I'm the only person in the world that has never had sushi... See even before going veg I hated fish. I mean LOATHED. Fish is fishy and just gross. So the thought of walking into a restaurant and being surrounded by raw fish and other oddities never appealed to me.

Of course I did realize that there are non fishy versions but just never bothered to make the effort. So last night we tried out hand at sushi. It was fine.. really rice and veggies how bad can it be. As rarely as I eat any sort of asian-ish dish I do love the accoutrements ... chopsticks, cute little bowls, etc. LOVE!

There really isn't a recipe here because you really don't need one, nori/rice/veggies..roll!
And man, they are not kidding about the sticky rice. It's sticky! Have a dish of cold water for your hands to help with the sticking.

~Venus

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Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?

Seitan (pronounced say-TAN, not Satan like my crazy family seems to think)

Note to chef of the family: If you've never tried this product before DO NOT take your smart-aleck children and spouse along with you to the store. I never heard the end of the devil jokes. Even while preparing dinner, my youngest child was still making remarks about having demons for dinner and how it wasn't very vegetarian.

So why use seitan? It's a protein alternative to soy. I regularly use textured soy protein for comfort foods (tacos, dinner loaf, etc), but I want to balance it out with other forms of non-meat protein. After reading up on it I found that it's made from wheat (so my celiac friends won't be able to use it) and has been used in various forms of Asian cooking for many years. I even saw a youtube video on how to make your own from scratch. I'm not that brave when it comes to trying new foods. I chose the packaged variety.

I decided to use seitan to satisfy a craving for beef teriyaki. I made it with fried rice tonight.



Ingredients:

Prepare the night before:
2 cups cooked rice (we use Jasmine rice)
1/2 - 1 pound prepared seitan marinating in your favorite teriyaki sauce.

Before eating:
2-3 eggs beaten
1/4-1/2 cup diced onion
1-2 c frozen/canned peas and carrots
3-4 tbsp soy sauce (we use low sodium so I can salt it later)



With a bit of olive oil in a saute pan, saute onion till translucent and then add peas/carrots and heat till warm. Next add the rice to the pan and drizzle with soy sauce. I always make sure I chop up big clumps of rice as you don't want to take a bite and still have cold rice.



When blended well, push the rice to one side of your pan and add the egg mixture. Don't worry if some peas decide to make their way to the eggs. It will turn out well. Scramble eggs as usual and then incorporate into the rice mixture.



I've never cooked seitan before, so I wasn't sure how to go about it. What I did was dump the contents of the bowl (marinade and all) into another frying pan and heated over warm till the teriyaki sauce was a bit thicker. I imagine you can add it to the same pan as the fried rice, but I have picky children who like things separated. Here is the final outcome:



Review: My kids don't eat fried rice, but they ate the seitan with plain white rice. I think the organic/natural teriyaki sauce I bought at the health food store was a bit spicy for my taste. I think next time I will try another variety of sauce, but the texture of the seitain was very good. Hubby and I will be eating this again.

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Cabbage Roll Casserole

The original form of this recipe is obviously rolls.. but small cabbage heads + chef laziness = casserole!


This is NOT a pretty meal, or a fancy meal. But it is an easy meal and it's fairly tasty.


You need:


cabbage
spanish style rice mix ( I just used yellow rice)
red bell pepper
onion
stewed tomatoes ( i used 2 cans and squished the chunks)
can of tom. soup
water
veggie meat like pepperoni or ham. I used soyrizo. obviously if you are a meat eater you can use any real meat you want.


Cook rice according to directions but use the tomato instead of water. I found it had to cook twice as long so honestly I think I'd just use water next time and possibly omit the tom soup using instead the stewed tomatoes to add extra liquid to the casserole.


dice up all veggies, cook veggies and any meat. add to rice.  Mix rice with cabbage bits (these were chopped earlier with your other veggies), mix well. This is where you use the tom soup + water to add extra liquid to the casserole (and where I will try to use the stewed tom next time.


cover with foil and bake at 350 for an hour.


It was good, not great. it was missing something but I'm not sure what yet. Everyone ate it and said it was ok but they wouldn't request it again though if I made it they would eat it and not whine. I think I might add in some veggie broth next time. If you try this let me know what tweaks you make and how it turns out.


Ok, here is your photo but I find casseroles pretty ugly so...  lol

~Venus

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