Rice Rolled

I made makisushi. Nearly everyone reading is likely to have tried this already at home so I'm not going to re-invent the wheel for you here but I thought a few notes about what I did might be of interest, particularly if you're in a place where Japanese ingredients are hard to find.

Firstly I used a short grain brown rice. I wanted to do this because it's a little more nutritious than the white and these rolls would inevitably form a major part of my food for a couple of days. To make sure the rice was tender and cooked quickly I soaked it for 12 hours before cooking. It's still not quite the same as rolling authentic Japanese white rice but it worked.

Then I had no sushi su, the vinegar mix used for seasoning the hot rice before it's rolled. This is very easy to make at home; the basic proportions are by volume:

9 measures of rice vinegar
3 measures of sugar
1 measure of salt
1 measure of mirin

However I had to substitute for the rice vinegar with cider vinegar. This is much stronger than rice vinegar, more acidic, so I replaced 3 measures of vinegar with water to reduce the acidity. I also cut right back on the salt, which I regret now from a taste point of view but wanted to be healthy, and I had no mirin. To give it that slightly raw alcoholic fragrance I used a teaspoonful of Cuban white rum but there's no doubt mirin would have worked better.

Gently heat the ingredients together in a thick bottomed pan until the sugar and salt have dissolved, no need to boil. This keeps quite well so you can make more than you need and keep the rest in a clean jar in the fridge for next time.

I had no pickled ginger. Root ginger, the younger and more tender the better, is easy (if frightening) to slice on the mandoline into very thin wafers. Use a little of your sushi su to cover them and allow to marinate for several hours. I made a small jar of this too, to see me through the next couple of weeks.

Not perfect, but it helped to satisfy my cravings for the exotic in this rural backwater of France.

Tempura Don

There's a Japanese restaurant in Streatham we sometimes go to when we're in the UK. They do a nice age-dashi dofu but we often end up ordering this, because we love tempura and it makes a complete meal with a bowl of miso soup.

This is my version for Northern France. Tempura is a lot of faff to go to for one person but as soon as I saw the tight flower heads of the Land Cress and tender baby leaves of the Comfrey I knew that the moment for making an effort and gaining huge reward had come.

Rice is, well, rice.

The tempura batter is a little more Japanese-ish than entirely Japanese. Plain flour is mixed with a vegan lager beer, just until it's combined in a creamy, dippy sort of way.

The vegetables are Comfrey, Land cress flower heads and local 'sand' carrots. I also did a couple of slices of onion, sliced through the root end so that they would hold together but they weren't completed in time for the picture. Dip the dry vegetables in the batter, scrape off the excess (particularly important for the comfrey) and deep fry, not too hot, until puffed up and lightly golden. You can hold cooked pieces in a hot oven for a very short time but the sooner you eat them the better.

And let me apologise now about the picture. It's getting dark here, the rain was just starting and my dinner was getting cold. I didn't hang around out there.

The dipping sauce is made from some finely sliced ginger, a clove of finely sliced garlic, 1 part shoyu, 1 part rice vinegar and 2 parts water gently simmered for a few minutes and then strained.

I am stuffed and slightly overwhelmed by this quantity of fried food, but it was worth it. Definitely.