If you’ve been reading my blog for awhile, you’ll know that every year my family has a massive Christmas party in Newfoundland called an at-home, where friends and friends-of-friends drop by for a few hours in the afternoon on their way to other Christmas parties, most likely. Ours is a little different from the normal spread of raw vegetable platters, sausage weiners, cheese and cookies, though.
I choose a theme, such as layers (1st annual), fish (2nd), South American (6th) or Star Wars (8th), cook for days, and then eat way too much double-decker cake, sustainable Arctic char, ceviche and swamp rat (lamb) stew, respectively.
This year, the theme was sushi. But since you actually don’t get much sashimi-grade fish in Newfoundland, I stuck with all cooked options: aburi-style broiled nigiri, cured mackerel, lobster, crab and smoked Labrador char.
I also did lots of vegetarian options (we bought 20 avocados), including a lacklustre dragon roll (too much work to cut it properly), paleo rolls with cauliflower rice and almond-dill paté, and chirashi bowls of quinoa, cucumber, carrot and sweet potato.
The reason I wanted to do sushi was because I wanted to build a sushi snake/dragon and have it drape over the entire dining room table, like so:
I tried to make a sushi bridge, so that the snake/dragon’s tail could cross over itself, but I ended up just stacking pieces on top of each other. You can see how the white inside-out roll on the bottom right of this photo goes over itself:
I’m probably most proud of my rising dragon trail to get to the higher platform near the quinoa hand rolls and sweet potato nigiri See the top left of this photo:
And this one:
I used nori pieces, bowls of soy sauce, miso sauce, unagi sauce and other dishes to create the dragon’s path:
Needless to say, the snake didn’t live long. And when later guests came, they couldn’t really see the snake concept anymore. The dining room table basically just looked like a disaster zone, with random pieces of crab maki hidden under the charred ends of a piece of parchment paper used to broil the sushi pizzas.
Here’s a non-charred sushi pizza. This one slid right off its greased pie plate. I did a layer of sushi rice, a layer of spicy mayo (coconut yogurt and sriracha sauce instead of mayo), then another layer of rice, followed by wild Pacific salmon sashimi slices. I did some other versions with the wild, smoked Labrador Arctic char.
I did some other sushi pizzas with the wild, smoked Labrador Arctic char.
Here’s the raw chirashi bowl with raw almond-dill paté, cucumber, carrots and sesame seeds. It went well witih the miso sauce of organic white miso, grated ginger, coconut yogurt (not raw, but you could use soaked and blended cashews instead), gluten free tamari and unseasoned rice vinegar (not raw, but you could use raw apple cider vinegar instead).
And here are the rice balls. They’re made with a miso-tahini dressing that you mix in. It wasn’t very good. It needed more miso and tamari and something sweet to balance the oily nuttiness of the tahini. Next time. But the presentation was good: they’re rolled in nori, toasted sesame seeds and hot chili flakes. The flakes sneak up on you.
And finally, soy paper rolls. I started making more nigiri as I ran out of nori for maki. But then I remembered the soy papper rolls a friend had brought to my last sushi potluck. The soy doesn’t close as well as nori, but it looked cool (bottom left, wrapping around the soy sauce bowl).
What else? Oh! I made homemade pickled ginger, which should be yellow unless you use a funky Asian varietal of ginger that’s naturally pink. The pink prepared sushi ginger you find in North America is all coloured and usually has a bunch of preservatives added. Homemade takes a little more effort, but is only four ingredients: ginger, salt, sugar and rice vinegar.
And what were the rolls? I did California rolls with avocado, cucumber and lobster or crab; vegetarian rolls with various combos of carrots, cucumber, avocado, sweet potato, quinoa, cauliflower and pear; lobster and crab maki; sole and Pacific salmon aburi (torched or broiled) nigiri, smoked char maki; char and avocado rolls; cured mackerel maki (I did a one-day sugar, then salt, then rice vinegar cure); unagi chicken maki (I marinated and then baked a bunch of chicken with eel-less unagi sauce); teriyaki beef (same deal: marinated and then slow-cooked a pot roast, then rolled it into maki), and…I think that’s it.
We also did a bubble tea buffet with four types of tea, boba tapioca pearls, homemade lychee jellies and mango jellies and herb grass jellies, as well as a Japanese dessert table with strawberry mousse cakes, chestnut shortcakes, dairy free tiramisu, creamy meringue-topped bananas foster and three Uncle Tetsu’s cheesecakes (a dairy-free, gluten free version), which is two more than you’re allowed to buy when you stand in line at the popular bakeshop).
Photos of those tooth-decaying treats to come!
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