Tag Archives: seafood

Thai-style lettuce wraps

Thai-style lettuce wraps

Thai-style lettuce wrap filling

Make something easy and refreshing, like I did.  I had a 1 pound container of lump crabmeat from Costco on hand that I needed to use, as well as three heads of romaine lettuce.  What else would there be to do but make Thai crab lettuce wraps?  I could rig up the lettuce leaves and filling and then we could all roll our own wraps on the fly while watching a movie.  Sold.  I broke up the crabmeat and mixed it with chopped scallions, roasted peanuts, lime juice, fish sauce (you can get this in any Asian market), Sriracha sauce (ditto about the Asian market, but you can use some kind of dried, ground chili, as well, though not the ‘chili powder’ mix  for chili con carne), chopped cilantro, a few chopped mint leaves, shredded red cabbage, a pinch of sugar and a little salt.  Make your filling to taste with the things I mention, but if you are not used to nailing that hot-sour-sweet profile so common in Asian cuisine, then mix the liquids, Sriracha and sugar by themselves until they work well together (taste as you go) and then add the result to the other ingredients.  You don’t want to waste a pound of crabmeat, which I would rather die than do.  Advice:  don’t add too much liquid to the filling; you can always save leftover sauce for something else.  Go easy on the salt, because there is plenty of it in fish sauce.  Go easy on the fish sauce.  Fish sauce is magical.  If you use a little, you’ll get great flavor that won’t immediately make you think of fish sauce.  Too much, and you will be turned off and won’t taste the crab.  Let the mass sit and mingle in the fridge for an hour, covered.  To prep the lettuce, just cut off the stem and separate the leaves.  Fill your sink with cold water and some ice, if you have it, and let the leaves soak in there for a few minutes.  Move them, in layers, to paper towels.  You can then roll them up in the towels, wrap up and store in the veggie crisper of your fridge, if you won’t be eating right away.  I don’t need to tell you how to eat this, do I?  I thought not.

Sushi spring rolls

Sushi spring rolls

In the interest of something light and fresh, I made sushi spring rolls this evening.  This is something I have been making for years, essentially rolls with rice paper and lettuce instead of rice and seaweed.  You need:  butter lettuce leaves, spring roll wrappers (these are made of rice and are dry and round — kind of clear.  You need to soak them before use) and fillings.  If you purchase some sashimi grade albacore tuna, which is reasonably priced, and a package of kani kama (fake crab meat set up in pieces for sushi), you’ll be in good shape.  Be sure you have a bit of Best Foods/Hellman’s mayo, some Sriracha hot sauce, a few scallions, an English cucumber and a Haas avocado, too.  With these things you can make tuna rolls, spicy tuna rolls, tuna and scallion rolls, fake crab rolls, spicy fake crab rolls, California rolls, spicy California rolls, and more.

You’ll need to prep everything first and then set up an assembly line.  Separate your lettuce leaves, wash and dry them thoroughly.  You can store them in a plastic bag between damp paper towels if you prepare them in advance.  Wash/dry/chop the scallions.  Peel the cucumber and cut into 3″ X 1/4″ segments.  You won’t need to seed an English cucumber, but you will if you use the other kind.  Cut the halved avocado into long slices.  Take half of your kani kama and pull it apart slightly so it is not so densely packed.  This stuff is generally stringy so you will be pulling apart strands.  If you get the variety that is solid, which is not as good, then just leave it as-is.  Shred the other half and mix with enough mayo to make a non-runny crab salad.  Take half of the crab salad and mix in a bit of the Sriracha.  You will now have some kani kama, some crab salad and some spicy crab salad.  Take your tuna and cut it into 3″ strips of any thickness you like.  If you bought a large piece of albacore you should have some trimmings – meaning perfectly good to eat but in scraps.  Chop the trim coarsely and  mix with a little Sriracha.  If you don’t have trim then you can use some of your blocked tuna, of course.

You now have, count ’em, five fillings.  Set up an assembly line starting with a large bowl of warm water, about six wet paper towels, and a dinner plate.  Then you’ll need a dry board to prepare your rolls, and a sharp knife and clean place to cut them.  I use a large board and do the cutting on one corner.  Finally, you’ll want a serving plate to place the cut rolls.  Place your veggies and fish fillings within easy reach of the board, and be sure to keep the bottle of Sriracha handy in case you want to squeeze some directly into rolls.  Have plenty of hand towels nearby.  Now take four of the wrappers and submerge in the bowl of water.  Let them stay there for about a minute.  Lay a wet paper towel on the dinner plate and spread out a soaked wrapper on top of it – being careful not to split or tear it.  Then cover with another wet paper towel.  Keep layering until you have no more wrappers.  Add wrappers to the water and replace in the paper towels (new ones on the bottom of your layers) as you go so you always have soft wrappers ready.  Then you will need to do this:  take a wrapper and lay it out on your board.  Cover the inner 2/3 or so with lettuce leaves so you are placing filling onto the lettuce and not the bare wrapper.  Add veggie lengths in the middle and then top with some sliced fish or fish salad so you have sort of a tube shape of fillings.  Add scallions – or not.  Pretend you are filling a burrito in that you want to wind up with a hefty roll but have enough of the outside of the wrapper available to roll it without any ooze.  Then roll it up as you would a burrito:  fold in the sides and then tuck the top under the front of the fillings and roll toward you as tightly as you are able.  It takes practice to produce a non-floppy roll, but you can always eat your mistakes.  Then cut the roll in half at an angle and place on your serving platter.  Since all of these fillings go together you can add what you like when creating rolls.

Eat them as soon as you can after they are put together and serve with soy sauce, ginger  and wasabi, if you like.  Note that I did not include any quantities since I do not know how big you will be making your rolls.  For the four of us I generally use about 12 ounces of kani kama and 12 ounces of albacore.   If you live near Berkeley you can buy the fish at Tokyo Fish (1220 San Pablo Avenue) or Berkeley Bowl (2020 Oregon Street).  They carry large pieces (about a pound or so) of frozen sashimi grade albacore that generally needs only minor trimming of fibrous material.  I have rarely had to deal with a bloodline in these hunks of fish – which you always want to trim off and discard.  The kani kama will also be available frozen.  Buy the frozen fish a day or two in advance and let it thaw out in the fridge.  The rest of the stuff can be found at any decent Asian market.  Trust me.

Another hint is to keep everything dry.  Wet lettuce, for example, will keep softening the wrappers and turn your rolls into mush.  Keep moving your wrappers, too – don’t let them sit in the water too long.  Even if they feel too firm when you take them out they will be soft enough when you need them because they will be in wet paper towels awhile.  If the paper towels dry out, wet them.  Wipe your knife off with a kitchen towel between roll cuttings.  Finally, don’t yell at me if you feel these instructions are not detailed enough.  Instead, just contact me if you want to know more.  Believe me when I tell you that these rolls are worth learning how to deal with spring roll wrappers.

Smoked whitefish at Costco

Whitefish in shrink wrap sold at Costco in December 2007

Joy of joys, they started selling smoked whitefish at my Costco.  This is a cleaned whitefish that has been fully deboned, though the skin remains.  They put the two halves of the cleaned fish together in the package so it looks more or less like a whole fish.  My mother made some whitefish salad out of this, meaning she flaked the fish and mixed it with Hellman’s and a bit of sour cream.  Not bad, but this is one salty whitefish.  In fact, this is the saltiest smoked whitefish I ever bought.  If you can deal with that, and I can, since it is this or nothing, then give it a go.  I don’t know about your place, but working with smoked fish products here has the dog skidding into the kitchen.

Mom and the dog making whitefish salad in December 2007

Make your own gravlax

Stayed up late yesterday to start the gravlax so now it’s tomorrow.  Gravlax is cured salmon that you eat sort of like lox – but it is not smoked.  It’s easy to make, but you need some basic equipment to allow it to cure safely, namely some sort of strainer contraption with a drip pan and a way for you to put a top on with a weight.  Everything should be made of stainless steel.  Hotel pans are good for this and you can buy them in a restaurant supply store or online.  I use two 4″ half pans and one 2″ perforated half pan.  The “half” refers to half of a full-size hotel pan – which are the pans you see on steam tables.  The number indicates the height of the sides.  The perforated pan needs to be shallower than the one you are using for the drippings, obviously.  I suppose you can use a couple of sheet pans and a cooling rack in a pinch.  Anyhow, once you have your pans and they are clean, clean, clean, you can go to town and get a boneless side (fillet) of salmon WITH the skin attached.  Get the freshest fish you can muster.  Locate cheesecloth, a lemon, an ounce of vodka or gin, a bunch of dill and a pastry brush.  Mix a cure:  6 oz of kosher salt, 6 oz of sugar and a heaping tablespoon of ground black pepper.  Wash and dry the salmon fillet and gently remove any pin bones with pliers or tweezers.  If you run your finger down the middle of the fillet you will feel them with no problem.  Place the perforated pan in one of the other pans and then drape some cheesecloth in there that overlaps the pan.  You want enough to be able to wrap the fillet when you are done here.  Place the salmon on top of the cheesecloth skin side down.  Do not overlap or bend the salmon to make it fit – the fillet should lay perfectly flat.  Squeeze the lemon over the flesh.  With the pastry brush, brush all exposed flesh with the vodka or gin.  Next, pack the entire cure over the fish.  Use less cure for the thinner end and make sure you have the flesh completely covered.  Now, cover the salmon with the dill, which you should chop roughly.  Wrap the loose cheesecloth over the top of the salmon so it is bundled.  Place the remaining pan on top of the fish, ensuring a snug fit.  Put a couple of bricks or canned foods on top.  Use anything stable that weighs a few pounds and is fine in the refrigerator.  Refrigerate for 2 – 3 days.  Remove cure (sounds like it will be a problem, but it won’t be, trust me – you can rinse and pat it dry quickly if it does not scrape off easily) and enjoy.  Slice thinly!  Gravlax keeps for 5 – 7 days, from what I understand, but it is usually gone in a day or two at my place.

Serve with dill honey mustard (make this by mixing equal parts honey and mustard and a little finely chopped dill) and hearty bread or crispbread, like Wasa.

Below are seven photos that I took when the gravlax was ready.  I took one at each stage of the “taking apart” and slicing process so that you can reverse-engineer things and see what it all looks like.  Note that I generally slice from the smaller end but you can slice from the larger end, if you want to access the less salty sections first.  Be sure to slice as close to the skin as you are able, making large, thin slices.

1)  Here is the way the gravlax contraption looks when it goes in/comes out of the fridge after the curing process.

gravlax out of the fridge ready to take apart

2)  Here the top hotel pan and weights have been removed.

Gravlax minus top hotel pan an weights

3)  The cheesecloth has been opened and the dill exposed.

Gravlax showing the dill cure on top

4)  Here the dill has been removed and you can see the remainder of the cure.  Note that I used more pepper for this batch than is called for in the base recipe.

Gravlax with the dill scraped off exposing the cure

5)  Now all the cure has been removed and it is ready to slice.  Give it a good sniff; it should smell fresh and briny.

Gravlax ready to slice

6)  Start slicing – making long slices, holding firm the opposite end of the fillet to the direction you are slicing (you can use a hand towel for this) and keeping the side of the knife in the position shown (i.e., parallel to the fish).  What you want to do is cut down slightly as you start, but only enough to start a thin slice, and then make that slice nice and long but no thicker as you go.  This takes practice, but don’t despair.  It is very difficult to describe what you need to do here; one trick is to use the opposite end of the fillet as leverage.  You can start on either end, but know that if you start close to the end you will not have a long slice because you will be cutting from your starting point to the end.  Note that this image is of the thin end of the side, not the main piece.  Also, I use my serrated knife because it is extremely thin and razor-sharp and works better for me than my current slicer, which is normally a better choice here.

slicing the finished gravlax

7)  Here’s a shot of the main side being sliced.  Normally I’d have less skin visible, but I wanted shorter slices for appetizers.

another shot of slicing gravlax

Genki in Berkeley

Spicy tuna roll at Genki in Berkeley

Sushi today at Genki.  Genki (1610 San Pablo Avenue, Berkeley) is an unassuming place in an ugly area (San Pablo Avenue – enough said) that we passed daily – sometimes multiple times – since 2000.  Today we stopped.  Matthew and I agree that our meal was very good.  We sat at the sushi bar so we could keep an eye on the goings on with the fish and were treated to friendly service and banter.  We both had one of the basic sushi combos for about $10 and ordered two deluxe rolls.  The combos were good in that the fish was very fresh and the fish to rice ratio favored the fish.  I mean, if you can’t serve a decent piece of tuna, I really don’t care about the flaming eel and blowfish roll.  While the lunch combos might be a better value at Yammy (El Cerrito Plaza), for example, Genki’s is solid.  The salad is a little odd, though, because the dressing sort of sits on top in a little lump.  I don’t know what to make of this but it tasted good.  The rolls were fabulous – and huge.  These kinds of extravaganzas cost about ten bucks wherever you go, but Genki’s were the largest I have ever been served.  We had what they call an Island Roll, with shrimp tempura inside and salmon, avocado and lemon on the outside.  The other one had shrimp within and spicy tuna and tobiko outside.  Oh, man, so good — so pretty.  If I were wealthy I’d eat this kind of thing all the time.  We’ll  be going back soon for more rolls.

Island roll at Genki in Berkeley

Island roll at Genki in Berkeley