Ships and Hanabi

One of the great festivals I've had the good fortune to experience was a Ships Festival. Large old fashioned sailing ships came into the Dejima pier and all around the area was food and music. The ships themselves were incredible, I didn't realize how HUGE they could be.

During the afternoon we walked around and looked at all the ships, and watched dance performances. The festivals bring in a lot of people from all over so it was really crowded. In the late afternoon we met up with some friends and decided to go have kaiten sushi. This type of sushi consists of a bunch of little plates on a conveyor belt and you grab whatever you want and are charged by how many plates you have. It can actually be a really cheap way to eat sushi and you have a lot of options. 

Corn sushi...??

 After dinner we headed back to the pier and the ships were even more amazing than before. They had all been strung with lights and as the sun went down the whole place glowed, It was really beautiful.

 But the best was yet to come. We settled ourselves in a big park overlooking the water and when it was dark enough watched an absolutely incredible fireworks display over the glittering ships.

Homemade Sushi

I was invited over to a friend's house for Asian food night so I broke out the sushi press and mat and went to town.





I started with California rolls which are simple crab, avocado and cucumber. They are a standby and everyone seems to like them.

For my second rolls I made a Japanese style omelette (made with egg, sugar and sake) and shiitake mushrooms. Both are cut in long thin slices and rolled up in the rice and nori.




Lastly I made nigiri "boat" style sushi with a small rectangle of rice surrounded by nori and topped with a shrimp and mayo mixture on some and flaked salmon with soy sauce on the others.

On a Roll

The other day I was feeling hungry, and also creative. I was hungry for Japanese/Hawaiian style Spam masubi (I know spam sounds weird, but I like it) which is sushi rice with fried Spam on top. But I was also hungry for Vietnamese style spring rolls (the soft ones, not the fried ones). So I decided to combine the two and see what happened.

Spring Roll Wrappers

Normally when you make spring rolls you use a rice wrapper filled with vermicelli noodles, shrimp, carrots, cucumber, sprouts, lettuce and mint.

But I didn't have all of those things handy, so here is what I did instead: A rice wrapper (dipped in water to make it soft, sushi rice, SPAM (fried in sweet unagi sauce), romaine lettuce, and red cabbage.



Forgive the messy wrapping job, but it was yummy

 The dipping sauce was my husbands creation based on one we had at a restaurant. It's a little water, hoisen sauce, almond or peanut butter, and soy sauce melted together in a sauce pan.