Spicy Hamachi Gunkan-Zushi

You people know how much I love my hamachi. All 5 of you. Well I really love it - and most recently - I love it in my spicy tuna mixture. It's really easy but you need to eye the ingredients to suit your own tastes. Just dice up hamachi (yellowtail) and mix with kewpie (japanese mayo), sriracha, chili oil, soy sauce, yuzu, and add salt and pepper.

You can buy Kewpie in any Japanese market. It's a squeeze bottle with a red lid. Yuzu itself is either really expensive or hard to find so I use a yuzu citrus vinegar that is way more citrus than vinegar. Try looking for a "Yuzu Ponzu".

Sriracha should be in every cupboard and chili oil is my favorite to cook with, especially when making Kim Chee Gyoza.

Put in the liquid ingredients a little at a time because you don't want your mixture too runny with soy sauce and yuzu.

Also to wrap, just make a small oval of sushi rice (like you would for nigiri) and wrap a strip of nori (seaweed) around it leaving a negative space on top and then spoon in your topping.

Valentine's Day

I like Valentine's Day but I never go to dinner at a restaurant because it's just not as valuable as creating your own menu at home and taking the time to follow through on every step. I just wanted to capture the items in my 4-course meal here but have not outlined any recipes.

1st course: hamachi-in-a-blanket

I marinated fresh slices of hamachi in soy sauce, rice vinegar, yuzu, lemon, and pulverized cilantro. Then I wrapped the pieces in a thin crepe, tied with a chive to keep it together and topped it with wasabi tobiko. It was my dining companion's favorite of the night.

2nd course: cauliflower & basil soup,

seared scallop, truffle oil

If you don't own a chinois already then buy one. It really makes all the difference when presenting a soup and gives it that really flavorful fine restaurant quality and consistency. For this I just cooked cauliflower, a teeny bit of butter, and onions in a pot. Once they softened, I added chicken stock, salt, and pepper. I then took a hand blender, pureed everything and added chopped up basil. This ingredient really made all the difference in flavor. Once through the strainer, I added a seasoned seared scallop and dotted truffle oil on the surface.

3rd course: homemade ravioli in a saffron cream

sauce with lobster and morels

So yeah, this wasn't cheap or easy by any means but it was fun and I learned a lot! Making your own fresh homemade pasta is empowering. I highly recommend it. My ravioli kind of fell flat because it was an arduous task for a first-timer, but the stuffing worked great: goat cheese, seared endive, and bland oyster mushrooms.

The lobster is from a lobster tail and the morels were dried and rehydrated. For the sauce, I cooked stock and a little cream with shallots, used my mortar and pestle to crush up saffron, added it to the sauce and it immediately turned a brilliant yellow. I strained the sauce through mesh, then added the lobster, morels, and ravioli and cooked together for about 5 minutes.

The fourth course was a spiced carrot cake but I didn't get photos. Maybe next year.