Over beers at a local ale haunt, Zam and I discussed recipes we might like to show the world via our blog. Well, shot came to beer, Zam brought up sushi and VIOLA! Breakfast sushi birthed itself out of our brains, a veritable Athena of perishables!
Rather than go out and buy specific ingredients for said sushi, we utilized what lived in Zam's cabinets. We feel utilizing what's at hand not only conserves, but forces us to be as creative as possible. And that's half the fun of cooking!
For OUR sushi we used:
Crepes as Nori (a recipe modified from The Joy Of Cooking)
- 3/8 cup flour
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp double acting baking powder
- 1 tbsp powdered sugar
- 1 egg
- 1/3 cup milk
- 1/6 cup water
- dash vanilla
Make a well in the dry ingredients. Pour the egg mixture into your well. Mix together enough so all ingredients are wet, be careful not to overmix. Bubbles will work themselves out, don't worry.
You can leave the batter in the fridge to rest for up to 6 hours. At least 1 hour of rest is recommended. We ignored this step and our crepes still turned out quite crepelicious.
Use a pan roughly the size of your desired crepe. Heat it thoroughly. Splash a drop of water on the pan to test the heat. It's super important that the pan is HOT! Now, add a couple drops of oil. Seriously, only a couple. We added too much oil at first and it just drowned the crepe batter.
Put a scant ladle full of batter on the pan. Pick up the pan and spread the crepe batter out by tilting the pan back and forth, side to side.
Leave the crepe alone for a minute or two. Using a spatula, flip your crepe if it's ready. While, traditionally, you want to let the crepe brown, for breakfast sushi you only want it slightly browned, if even. The key is to make sure your crepe is still flexible enough to wrap around your other ingredients.
Crepes done!
For the filling:
- Eggs (we used two)
- Onion
- Mushrooms (about 3 or 4 of any varietal)
- Canned Ham
The onions, mushrooms and ham we cut into strips, the way you would cut any sushi stuffer. We cooked the onions very slightly, so they retained their crunch for texture. The mushrooms we cooked a fair amount and we browned the canned ham (which, after cooking was delicious, but before cooking smelt like a freshly dressed wound).
Preheat your oven to 375.
To build your sushi, lay out a crepe. Scatter a thin layer of chopped eggs on top. Lay out the insides on the part of the crepe closest to you. Roll up your crepe. If you have one of those fancy bamboo sushi mats, you can use that to make the crepe as tight as possible.
Place the crepe in the oven for about 6 minutes so all your ingredients return to a tasty temperature.
Remove. Using as sharp a knife as possible (which we lacked at casa de Zam), cut your crepe into little sushi bites.
Now look how fancy you are!
We made a really easy cheesy dipping sauce, because everyone loves to dip! For it we used some colby cheese, a little milk and 3 whole hot peppers. Zesty.
It turned out surprisingly tasty for a brain child born at a bar. Things I would like to suggest to anyone else wanting to make breakfast sushi:
- Keep in mind texture and color. Contrast is key! Sushi is a food designed for show. It's all about color and texture! I really wanted something green for the insides, like green onions or peas. But, alas, we had none. Also, keeping the onions on the more crunchy side (Zam's brilliant idea) was awesome. Maybe putting something even crunchier in, like sprouts or anything fried, would be ideal.
- Anything at all can be a wrapper for this. Originally, I was thinking bacon. I really wanted to wrap the whole thing in bacon and fry it. BACON!
- Dipping sauce, while not necessary, brings it all together. If we'd had some pepperjack that would have been real nice. But, at any rate, I recommend SPICY.
Go sushi your faces off!
Fish and Chips,
Trixi and Zam
Fish and Chips,
Trixi and Zam
