Sunday, August 19, 2007

Japanese sushi dinner at home

Last night we were invited to a friend's for dinner. She (a Japanese teacher) is getting married next month, and her fiance had gone to Sydney for the first of his buck's night parties... good for him. Anyway, she took the opportunity to get us round for a semi-traditional Japanese meal.
With our G&Ts, we snacked on juicy edamame (salted soya beans.)
For dinner there was the full bamboo sushi mat, soy sauce dishes, wasabi and chopstick setup, but we had square dishes as well to make our sushi upon. We made maki (hand rolls), with a choice of fillings: beautifully fresh raw tuna or salmon, cooked beef strips, omelette, cucumber, avocado, prawn, mayonnaise and tinned tuna. Big lacquered bowls of miso soup on the side, chock-full of silken tofu cubes and wakame (seaweed).
I had taken the camera, but in the excitement I totally forgot to take any photos! Which is a pity, because of the beautiful presentation: the perfect slices of fish, the contrast between the rough-glazed pottery dishes and the smooth silky tuna slices, the avocado fanned out on the dish like a peacock's tail, the steamy shiny bowls of soup and the glistening rice. It was truly a feast for the senses!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow... just reading about it makes me want to eat it. You obviously thought about it much more than me - I just picked the plate out of the cupboard and thought "Yep, this'll do".... But I would like to put that down to the Japanese in me coming out subconsciously. Shall have to do it more often. I now have a new favourite dish to make at home - shabu shabu... where you slowly dribble thinly sclices of meat over a vegetable broth. You can hear the boiling sounds now.... shabu, shabu....

MMMMM.........