thai style shrimp salad sushi!

It's been a while since i last made an extensive post about my fun in the kitchen so today I'm going to share my little experiment with making sushis. I saw a few posts on the internet about how to prepare the rice and saw the possibility of using cucumbers to wrap around the sushi, which i thought was just brilliant. I decided to do a thai-japanese fusion by using a thai style marinade to season the shrimp before putting it together as sushi. The steps to prepare it is actually not very difficult at all, it just takes some time. So here we go!

Materials:

A. Fish sauce
B. 1 tblsp white rice vinegar
C. shrimps (boiled)
D. 1 cup rice
E. minced garlic
F. red chili peppers
G. cilantro
H. lime (or lime juice)
I. minced ginger
J. lemon juice (or lemons)
K. 3/4 tblsp sugar
L. minced onion and/or shallots
M. cucumber (prefably not bent/curved in shape)
N. kelp

Directions:

1. wash 1 cup of rice with water and strain out the wash water and add in 1 cup of fresh water (you may scale this up if you plan to make a larger batch. the rice:water ratio is 1:1). gently rinse clean a piece of kelp (seaweed), and place it into the pot containing the rice and water. let sit for ~15 minutes. then place into rice cooker to steam. after rice is steamed, allow it to sit in the steamer for another 15 minutes before removing it.

2. while the rice is being cooked, prepare the vinegar needed to transform the rice into sushi rice. take 1 tablespoon of white rice vinegar and add in 3/4 tablespoons of sugar and a pinch of salt and stir until all crystals are dissolved.

3. once the rice is removed from the rice cooker, discard the piece of seaweed/kelp. Pour the vinegar mixture prepared in the previous step into the rice. Loosen the rice and combine it with the vinegar by digging and mixing. let the rice sit at room temperature until cooled (do not place it into the refrigerator).

 

4. while the rice is cooling,  prepare the thai shrimp salad by first boiling the shrimp in water until cooked. strain the shrimp, de-shell if necessary and mince into roughly the size of M&Ms. 

 

5. prepare the marinade by combining hot boiled water with the bottled fish sauce in a 1:1 ratio. add in 2 tablespoons of sugar, a pinch of salt, the red chili peppers and garlic. (the fish sauce you just made can be kept in the refrigerator for storage for a few weeks so you may make a larger batch to store if you wish). take out the portion of fish sauce to be used for marinating the shrimps and add in extra minced garlic if desired, minced ginger, cilantro leaves, red chili peppers, sugar, lemon juice, and lime juice. adjust the flavoring according to personal preference. mix and press on the contents to combine the aromas of all the spices used. The resulting marinade should ideally by a blend of sweet, sour, savory along with a hint of all the spices used.

 

additionally, you may also add in some plum sauce to add to the sweetness of the marinade. this is optional, but i personally like the resulting taste.

6. combine the minced shrimp prepared in step 4 with the marinade prepared in step 5. fold and mix the contents together and allow the shrimp to marinate for at least 30 minutes.

 

7. prepare the rice for assembly into sushis while the shrimp is sitting in the marinade. the rice should be cooled at this point, place a piece of saran wrap over a plate or on a clean counter top and obtain another piece that will be used to shape the rice into riceballs. 

8. obtain a scoop of rice onto the piece of saran wrap and squeeze the rice into a rice ball with the saran wrap between your palms and the rice. shape it into an ovular ball around the size of an avacado pit. and place onto the plate with the saran wrap. repeat this step to prepare all the rice.

 

9. wash the cucumber, you may use the coarse side of a clean dish sponge to gently rub the cucmber to clean off any tiny specs on the skin. then use a fruit skinner and glide it down the long-side of the cucmber to make the cucumber skins for the sushi.

10. wrap 1 slice of the cucumber skin around each rice ball prepared in step 8.

 

11. the shrimp should be finished marinating now. scoop out some of the marinade and drip a few drops onto each sushi.

12. fill the tops of each sushi with the marinated shrimp along with all the onion and garlic and ginger, and spices added. i picked out the red chili peppers as those tend to be too spicy if they are accidentally bit on, and also moved all the cilantro to the top of the sushis for garnishing.

and voila! there you go, home made thai shrimp salad sushis! now sit down and enjoy the sweet/sour/savory/spicy sushis!

questions? concerns? suggestions? leave me a comment and I will make sure I get back to you!

Have fun in the kitchen :)

Ney