Super Happy New Camera Celebration Time!!!

Woo hoo, woo hoo, woo hoo! I got a new camera! I think it is super-cute. It is everything I wanted in a camera – small, obnoxiously pigmented, and easy to use. Goodbye white balance adjust! Hello point-and-shoot! (I think I just heard Albany John and his entire family cringe)

Man, I was really hurting without any camera, and the one we generously received from our neighbors was really a camcorder, and my hands couldn’t keep it still enough to get a clean photo out of it.

I was so excited to get a working camera, and the first photo I took was of that pear, reading a Vietnamese cookbook while sitting outside. Oh pear, you were so tasty, and you came out so prettily in my picture!

I really wanted to celebrate my camera, though. How else could I celebrate, but to make…


Sushi! Really, really crappy sushi!

I tried making gunkan maki (the boats/battleship ones) out of the brown sushi rice we had, but it wasn’t sticky enough. Foo. Next time I’ll do a 50-50 mix of brown and white, or just stick to the white rice. I made the few crappy ones you can see, but they had a hard time standing up and having the seaweed stay stuck on them.

I also decided to make tamago, which is commonly seen as the yellow rectangle topping for sushi. I found some recipes online and went with what sounded good. I also don’t have a square pan for making tamago, but I really didn’t have any issues with making it in a round pan. It wasn’t perfect, but hey, it was my first time and not too shabby. I think it was just fine for making for at-home cooks.

See? It got rolled just fine, and I kept the heat on low, so nothing browned and it remained nice and yellow. It probably could have been rolled tighter, but that is for next time. I was just happy it didn’t break mid-flip at any point!
I really liked my tamago recipe – it was warm, just sweet enough, and had a light, creamy flavor.
Actually, I’m not sure you really need to roll and layer your tamago. I was watching an old episode of Iron Chef, where it was a sushi battle between Masaharu Morimoto and an old school Edo-style chef. The Edo version of tamago was mixed together and placed in a pan over low heat, so it developed little bubbles and browned on the sides. That also looked really good, and it would probably hold shape better for first time tamago makers.
Either way, I am a tamago convert. It’s simple, very easy and cheap to make, and needless to say, delicious.
But, with the way the rice turned out, there was no way I was going to make the tamago nigiri I was originally planning on.

“Well, crap,” I thought. (I know, I have really deep thoughts)

I decided to turn the meal around, though. I just put some rice in a bowl, topped it with tobiko (flying fish roe), slices of tamago, and slivers of toasted seaweed. I chucked in a tobiko topped gunkan maki of the two that decided to actually hold shape. They were so good, it made me wish I could have made more of them.

After dinner, I had the last bar of the insanely good bar dessert thing. My friend gave me some because she made a ton of them. They’re like dulche de leche blondies. So heavy, but so good. And there’s no chocolate in it either – SO GOOD. Albany John has been calling them my “Caramel Energy Bars”.

Like in the morning:
“Hey, you should have your caramel energy bar to get your started for your big day”
or in the afternoon:
“Did you have your caramel energy bar to keep your energy up until dinner?”
or after dinner, or whenever he opens the fridge and sees them there.

Oh, and here’s the recipe I used to make tamago

Tamago:

3 eggs, beaten
1-1.5 T sugar
1/3 t soy sauce
3 T dashi stock (I just put some bonito flakes in hot water and let it sit for a few minutes until the smelled moderately fishy)

Mix sugar into the beaten eggs, stirring well.

Add soy sauce and dashi stock.

Heat a pan over low heat. Grease.

Pour ¼ of your mixture in the pan (enough to have a thin coating) and let cook until set.

Once set, start at one end and flip it over on itself until it is all rolled up.

Grease again, add another ¼ of the mixture until set and start at the large side, roll up.

Repeat until finished with egg mixture and set aside to cool and set up. Pour off any liquids.