Vegetarian Sushi Filling

The video card on our desktop is down, so no pictures today. But it got me thinking about what I could write about that I don't have pictures for. Sushi is a summer staple in our house. I used to make fancy sauces for it as well, but now with little man's soy allergies less so. There are many reasons for eating vegetarian sushi, pregnancy, allergies, avoiding unsustainable fishes. Whatever your reasons you need not be limited (although it's still tasty) to cucumber and carrot matchsticks.

Here are a few of my favorite sushi fillings, mix and match them as you like.

Spicy Thai cashews from Trader Joes

Green onion

Avocado

Tempura fried tofu

Tempura fried jalapeno peppers

Hot peppers of any sort

Tempura fried veggies

Cucumbers that have been marinated in rice vinegar

Spicy cucumber salad (diced cucumbers mixed with a dressing of yogurt, cayenne, rice vinegar and a smidgen of sugar....I will post a recipe for this later, you can also add diced jalapeno to this)

Cream cheese

Cream cheese mixed with wasabi

Cream cheese mixed with Thai sweet chili sauce

Lemon pepper tofu

Lemon pepper asparagus

Marinated tofu (in a mixture of teryaki sauce garlic and cayenne)

Spicy nuts (either cashews or macadamia) Nuts that have been chopped and mixed with salt and chili oil....yum!

Veggies! Of course of any sort, matchstick, marinated, grilled, fried, whatever you like...then mix them with any of the other above ingredients.

Some of my favorite combinations....

Fried tofu, jalapeno, cream cheese

wasabi cream cheese, green onion, avocado

cream cheese, green onion

avocado, jalapeno

Marinated tofu, grilled bell peppers

Sushi Rice Bowl

The weather here lately has been sooooo nice*. And by nice I mean you just want to get up in the morning, run outside, and DIE of heatstroke. The last thing I want to do in this sort of weather is cook.....the first thing I want to do is lie half naked under a ceiling fan sipping on a Jamba Juice....but since we don't have Jamba Juice here, and I live with other people that's not going to happen....Everybody good and hungry? :)

Back to the point (I totally have one)....which is, this is a super yummy cold dish that I've eaten two days in a row for lunch. It's basically brown sushi rice mixed with chickpeas, sauteed peppers and onion, avocado, and then I drizzled mustard wasabi dressing over the whole thing. Today I garnished mine with pickled ginger, and green onion.

Three fantastic things about this dish, you can make as much or as little of the components as you want and serve it several days in a row. You can change it up quite a bit and still have it taste quite good, throw in whatever you have on hand, leftover steamed veggies, maybe some carrot or cucumber sticks for more of a salad feel. And you can serve it without the dressing to keep it soy free, as I did for my son. Short on time? Try using a store bought organic salad dressing such as this.


Mustard Wasabi Dressing

5 tbs oil (I used canola)
3 tbs seasoned rice vinegar
3 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp minced ginger
1 tsp mustard
1 1/2 tsp + more to taste prepared wasabi

Whisk all the ingredients together. This doesn't make a lot of dressing, but considering how little of it you need (I used about a tbs) it should do the trick.





*It's called sarcasm...love it, embrace it.