I used to think that I did not like sushi but I was totally wrong about myself. I have become a sushi-holic just like my boyfriend. We always love spending a dinner out in some Japanese restaurant and we ate so much that we felt like sumo’s after the meal. Thus I tried making some sushi nights at home, I made different types of sushi, sushi maki’s and also made ginger pickle once (now I don’t bother making them as it’s too much work and just isn’t worth it. You know you can buy a whole bag of …uh like 1kg of ginger pickle in any Asian store. However, making sushi and maki at home is another thing, which is really fun <3

Preparing sushi rice plays the most important role in making delicious maki rolls or even sushi (besides the quality of fish that you bought).

For two persons, you just need around 1 cup or maximum a cup and a half of sushi rice if you are really big sushi consumers like us. The best is to follow the cooking instruction on your sushi rice bag. But some sushi rice company doesn’t really give you an instruction, in which case, you could just use one and a half amount of the rice that you cook. For example: a cup of rice needs a cup and a half of water. It is told that the rice quality is much improved if you use bottled water, which I find a bit perplexed as I do not think chefs in a popular restaurant ever use bottled water for your rice and theirs sushi remain delicious enough to make you come back there again and again. Another tip is to soak the rice 30 minutes before cooking, use a rice cooker is the most simple thing to do.

While rice is there, prepare the mixture to add to your sushi rice, which includes: vinegar (mizkan), sugar, salt, a bit of mirin and sake (I always use dry white wine that what we tend to always have in our kitchen). Simply put them in a microwave for around 1minute or so to make it boil and to dissolve sugar.

Mixing the above mixture to your rice in front of a running fan to dry out a bit the rice and give your rice a shining look, then cover the bowl of rice with a damp cloth let it cool.

Let roll your maki or sushi and serve with ginger pickle, soya sauce and lots of wasabi!

We always love making sushi with salmon, tuna, eel, avocado, cucumber, crabstick, Japanese omlette. But really you can really be very creative with any fillings, I once tried sushi with mango on top :))

Those were made for my younger sister’s excursion, cannot remember when. Might be in 2008 or even before that.

Our first home-made sushi night together: I tried making ginger pickle,  inside-out maki, sesame maki and so forth, I really like those!

For those who are not fond of eating raw fish, you can make a Korean version of the sushi, “GIMBAB”, which is filled with Korean kimchi (chinese cabbage pickle), Korean sausage, fried egg, cucumber and carrot…. or as mentioned above, just which ever ingredients that you are thinking of.

My beautiful Charlotte ♥ which was made in April 2011. I did not have a real charlotte mould then and  just used a food plastic box.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_(dessert)

We made some roll rice noodle sheets yesterday (phở cuốn/ rolling Pho) and in result, we had a lot of herbs on hands so I decided to make some fresh spring rolls with steamed shrimps, Vietnamese sausage, omelette, left over rice noodle and a lot of herbs. Those were served cold dipped in fish sauce. BTW Choya plum wine is our favorite to compliment Asian food. Yummy!

A colleague gave Chomchom some kitchen utensils on his birthday party, one of which is a big transparent plastic bowl. What a wonderful gift that is nice to make a trifle with!

I tried buying Vietnamese fish to prepare braised fish today the real Vietnamese style with lots of lemongrass and galangal.

Tomorrow is Monday again, urg work!

I was so excited to make my own cake recipe today!

Yogi Charlotte Cake a.k.a Summer Berry Charlotte Cake

Well all roads lead to Rome, with me all reasons led me to create this version of a charlotte.

My bf Chomchom loves charlotte and always is craving for a trifle, while I should be busy digging in my thesis and find making sponge cake and custard to fill a real English trifle is too much to do at this particular moment.

How about a charlotte – trifle combination?

So that was my initial idea, I used my ‘precious’ charlotte mould bought by my bf’s mom ( I really like it, imagine how she carefully chose it for me, it had beautiful shape and where the lid is supposed to be, it can be different shapes, including a heart, a star, a tulip or a Xmas tree. It’s difficult to show you with only words, you’ll see what I meant later by looking at a star-shaped charlotte that I got from the mould.

As usual I first lined the mould with a layer of ladyfingers which had been dipped in syrup and rum, ( I love using alcohol in both cooking and baking, and my bf always asks for more) then filled half of the mould with a layer of strawberry mousse with fresh strawberries and a layer of ladyfingers, followed by a layer of blueberry mousse with fresh blueberries and closed with a layer of ladyfingers. Phew it sounds wordy but it’s really in an order, isn’t it?! Let’s refrigerate it in 4 hours and here it is, what I called a Yogi Charlotte Cake, the name of which was inspired by my bf (YogiN).

I was so in a rush to cut the cake, it might not look perfect but the taste is very refreshing!

For “the” mango lover ♥ A 3 layer- combination of mangoes and dark chocolate.  I created the recipe to use up a mango that hadbeen lying around for quite sometimes and it had become too soft to cut beautifully.