寿司料理授業 Sushi Cooking Lessons

Instead Of todays Japanese lesson, we learned how to make 手綱寿司 Tadsuna Zushi and まんじゅう Manjuu.

For that we were lead to another building than usual, which hosted a big room, designed to teach cooking. 素晴らしい Wonderful!



Our group's teacher



Next to our teachers, we had high class Japanese cooks explain to us the recipe.

手綱寿司 Tadsuna Zushi

A little fact about the Japanese language. When a word is combined with another one, like above, the first sound often becomes soft. So the strong S in Sushi becomes the soft Z when combined with Tadsuna or other Sushi types like Maki Zushi.

材料 Ingredients

干し椎茸 dried Shiitake Japanese mushrooms
小松菜 Chinese cabbage
人参 carrot 1本
卵 egg ２ヶ

米 rice
酢 vinegar
醤油 soy sauce
しょうが ginger

作り方

米
Wash and cook some rice together with some 昆布 Konbu seaweed, if you can find some. Then put the rice in a large bowl and mix it with half a cup of vinegar. Stir the rice / vinegar for 2 minutes.

卵
Mix the two eggs with some sugar, some salt. Then make scrambled eggs.

干し椎茸
Put the musrooms in water and add some vegetable stock, sugar and soy sauce. Then when the mushrooms are dry and cold, cut them into stripes.

人参
Cut the carrot in thin stripes and put them into water. Add some sugar, salt vegetable stock and boil it for a short while.

小松菜
Put the Chinese cabbage into hot water and add some salt. Cook it until it gets a nice color then put it into cold water and out again. Then cut it into thin stripes.

Use a long wooden board and put your 巻きす (Makikisu the bamboo board for making Sushi, see picture) on top. Now put some with plastic wrap on top, which will make everything a bit easier.
Now make small lines of the prepared ingredients from left to right: 卵 egg, 人参 carrot, 椎茸 mushrooms , 小松菜 Chinese cabbage then start again with egg until you reached the end.
Now spread another plastic wrap and put some rice in. Warp and form the rice like a tube and make it as long as your line of ingredients on the 巻きす Makikisu. Open the wrap and put the rice on top of the ingredients.
Now wrap the combination with the plastic warp under the ingredients and use the 巻きす Makikisu to make it round and sticky. Be sure to give it a good consistency.
Finally use the sharpest knife you have, best is of course a Japanese 包丁 (kitchen knife), and cut the long tube into mouth fit pieces; then carefully remove the remaining wrap.



line them up



measure the rice tube's length



make the tube the right length



and use the 巻ききす to make it more stiff



Yatta! Your done. You can eat your 手綱寿司 Tadsuna Zushi with some ginger and 醤油 Shouyu soy sauce.

Note:
(Usually the line on the 巻きす board starts with 海老 Ebi Shrimps. So if you want, you can get some Ebi and add it before 卵 egg. And more traditional than vegetable stock is 出汁 Dashi fish stock).



My friend Noppon



Yay for vegetarian Sushi



Juan's Sushi turned out a bit ugly

Ho! but now we want a nice desert, don't we! So let's make some Manjuu!

利休 まんじゅう Rikyuu Manjuu

材料 Ingredients

黒糖 black sugar 100g
上白糖 first class sugar 35g
水飴 starch syrup 20g
水 water 65g
重曹 baking soda 4g
薄力粉 (ふるう) wheat flour (low viscosity) 200g
餡子 Anko sweet bean jam/paste 25g

道具 Tools

steam pot
frying pan

作り方

Prepare a frying pan and fry the black sugar a little. Now add the white sugar, the starch syrup and the water and fry it on a weak flame until you have a black solution.

Prepare a bowl and put the solution and the flour together with the soda inside (using a sieve if you have one) and mix it really well. Put in a tiny bit of water, if it doesn't work out.

Now form around 12 little balls out of the dough. Using flour on your hands makes it easier to form. Then take a ball and make it flat, put a round ball of 餡子 Anko inside and slow and carefully wrap the dough around until it encloses the 餡子 Anko completely.

Now you need a steam cook pot with two stages. Put water in the first stage and make it boil, then put the まんじゅう Manjuu with a tiny piece of paper into the second stage and put the second stage on top of the first stage and close the lid. Now let it steam/cook for 10 minutes and they are done.



Our two Colombian guys starting from the left Giovanni and Juan



Don't add soap!

Yatta! Oishii! (Delicious!)



Our self made dinner: Sushi and Manjuu (mine is the bottom left corner)

Tips:
If you don't have a steam cook pot, don't worry. You don't need to be Mac Gyver to create tools. E.g. try to use a normal pot with some water and put a sieve in it. If it doesn't fit, fix it with paper clips.



a two level steam cooking pot





super kawaii bonus pictures! (the child of one of the Japanese students)