Sunday, February 6, 2011

Cauliflower "rice" sushi WIN.

Just a quickie to expound the virtues of cauliflower.  Turn that stuff into "rice" by giving it a whirl in a food processor until it's in rice-sized pieces, steam it in the microwave until it's cooked through, splash some rice wine vinegar on it, and use it to make super delicious sushi rolls!

Maybe something about spending my first five years of life in the Asian wonderland of Hawaii gives me powerful cravings for salty, umami-ey Japanese food, or maybe I just love salt and fish.  Either way, trying to go grain and soy free makes things difficult.  Using cauliflower rice and soy- and wheat-free coconut aminos is akin to blasphemy, probably, but it's a fun thing to mess around with.  I used our Paleo Dinner Club as an excuse to sway the theme to "Asia" and guinea pig my paleo peeps on this stuff

I followed this site's advice for the rice and the main idea, and this adorably weird and mesmerizing video for some of the fillings and rolling instruction.

Shrimp, egg, mushroom, cucumber, avocado!

You'll need your prepared cauliflower rice (a large head, with the inner core removed, yielded about 4 large rolls, enough for a few crossfitters to demolish in a matter of minutes), a package of seaweed wrappers (nori yaki), a bamboo rolling mat, and your fillings of choice.  Some prepared or powdered wasabi, pickled ginger (usually not paleo, but you won't eat gobs of it), and coconut aminos or tamari rounds out the experience.

Some suggested roll-fillings:

Real crab meat (the surimi stuff is full of garbage and the fishing practices for pollock are questionable in terms of sustainability)
Avocado
Cucumber
(I love Cali rolls that have yummy mayo and tobiko in them, but the tobiko at my Asian-mart had like, 12 ingredients, including HFCS, so I passed on it)
Steamed shrimp (I have to get on my soap box and encourage you to find shrimp from sustainably managed fisheries... a lot of farmed shrimp from SE Asia is grown using methods that harm vulnerable marine habitats), remove shells and "vein" (digestive tract), make small slices along the bellies to allow them to lay flat in the roll
Rolled omelet following the directions in the video above (it really works!)
Re-hydrated dried shiitake mushrooms, sliced thin
Daikon radish sprouts
Sushi-grade ahi tuna (add sriracha and a touch of toasted sesame oil to roughly chopped tuna to make spicy tuna... this was a BIG hit)
Sushi-grade wild salmon

As you might have guessed, the only real difficult part of this is just assembling and preparing a fun variety of fillings... it would be sneaky/fun to have a sushi assembly party and put out all the prepped fillings and make people roll their own creations (que Martha Stewart, eh?)

 
The damage about 10 minutes into the event
Party paleo people moving on to sashimi
We used the leftover fillings to make a tasty breakfast - cooked up the salmon and warmed up the shiitake mushrooms and shrimp, scrambled it with eggs, and topped with sriracha and avocado.

1 comment:

  1. Don't make me move up there for cauliflower sushi, I'll do it. Looks amazing, as always.

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