Sushi?

I don’t know why, but when I first read the recipe for chocolate ribbons in Bakewise the first thought my mind went to was “you could use that to make dessert suishi.” And so I set out to try it. This “sushi” is composed of malleable chocolate, rolled around a filling of coconut rice, mangos, pineapple, and kiwi. I topped it off with mango “caviar” in an attempt to complete the tromp l’oie effect. I have to say, making this was a whole lot of work. I’d never made malleable chocolate before, but it is not the easiest thing to use, specifically rolling it out is challenging, expect to get a good work out. I did think this tasted really good, when you first bite in the fruit and rice hit your mouth, followed by the taste of the chocolate. The recipe here is largely a guide, as these could be filled with almost anything, and a pretty wide variety of fruits would be good. I have cut the recipe for coconut rice in half from what I used, as it made way more than I needed. I would also recommend adding some flaked, sweetened coconut to the rice after it is cooked (or maybe just some coconut extract), as I didn’t think the coconut flavor came through as much as I’d like.

Making the mango caviar was my first experiment with “spherification” – turning liquids into spheres. I used agar agar for this spherification, rather than the more complicated chemicals used for dishes like liquid ravioli. This method has the disadvantage of turning the spheres into solid gel all the way through, but the advantage of using an ingredient that can be found in most health food stores and Asian markets, and doesn’t cost an absurd amount. I have read a number of recipes on this technique, and I’m not sure if you’re supposed to bring the agar agar mixture to a boil or not, I did. One recipe also said to blitz the mixture with an immersion blender, which I didn’t bother with. This was a mistake, as many of the agar agar flakes didn’t dissolve, resulting a weaker gel, and the occasional chunk of agar agar. I will definitely experiment with this technique again. I didn’t bother using a hypodermic needle to make my spheres, I just dripped the juice from a measuring cup. I also tried using a pastry bag, but attempts so squeeze near boiling liquid did not go well.

Coconut Sticky Rice

2 t flavorless oil (canola, vegetable)

1 cup Thai jasmine Rice

1 cup coconut milk

¾ cup water 

¼ tsp salt

1 T brown sugar

1. Use a paper towel to oil the bottom of a medium pot. Combine all ingredients in the pot over medium high heat. Bring mixture to a boil, stirring constantly, making sure to scrape the bottom.

2. Once the mixture begins to bubble, stop stirring, turn heat down to low, and cover the pot with a lid. Leave the lid slightly askew so that some steam can escape. Cook 15-20 minutes, until rice has absorbed all of the liquid.

3. Turn off the heat, but leave the pot on the burner and let rest for 5-10 minutes.

4. Remove the rice from the heat, and let cool COMPLETELY. If you want to use the rice soon, you might spread it in a baking pan or put it into the fridge or freezer. It is imperative that the rice be cold when you put it into the sushi, otherwise it will melt through your carefully rolled sushi, and cursing will ensue!

 

Mango Caviar

1 cup mango juice

1 T agar agar flakes* 

1-2 cups very cold (preferably from the freezer), neutral oil (such as vegetable or canola)

*I used flakes, because that is what my store had. The package had the 1 to 1 ratio on it, if you have a different form of agar (such as powder) check your packaging for the appropriate ratio. Otherwise, I have read that you want between 1-2% weight of agar to liquid. A cup of juice should take about 2.5 grams of agar.

1. Pour the cold oil into a shallow dish. You want breadth, not depth, you probably need less than an inch of depth.

2. Combine the mango juice and the agar argar. Blitz the mixture with an immersion blender to break up the agar agar. Put the mixture into a small saucepan over medium high heat and bring to a heavy boil.

3. Pour the mixture into a spouted measuring cup. Drip the mixture into the cold oil. You should see your droplets settle on the surface, then sink and turn into spheres after a few moments. How much you drip will determine the size of your spheres.

4. Make as many spheres as you want. Pour the remaining mango mixture into a ramekin and place in the fridge to set as a nice mango jelly. Use a fork to test if your spheres have set (they should be solid and resist the fork. If they haven’t set, place the pan into the freezer for a few minutes.

The caviar may look flat from the top, but from the side you can see they're really spheres

5. Pour the oil and mango caviar through a fine mesh strainer. Rinse the mango caviar with slow running, cold water, to clean off the remaining oil. Refrigerate until ready to use.

Malleable Chocolate Sushi wrappers

This may make more than you need, I only made one “roll” of sushi so I had a lot leftover

10 oz. semisweet chocolate

1/3 cup + ½ tsp light corn syrup (Bakewise recommends pouring this from a measuring cup that has been sprayed with non-stick cooking spray, so that all of it will come out easily. I scraped it out with a spatula)

1. Melt the chocolate in a medium saucepan over low heat. Once the chocolate is melted and smooth, remove from heat.

2. Quickly stir in the corn syrup into the chocolate. At this point you will have a wet, sticky mess. Use your spatula to continuously turn the mixture and fold it over on itself. As the mixture cools and you work it, it will begin to form a dough. Eventually the dough will pull away from the sides, and will no longer be sticky when you touch it (this may take awhile, I would guess it took me ten minutes).

3. Dump the dough onto a clean counter. Flatten the dough out, and fold it over on itself three times. Press it together, flatten it out, and fold it over again. Do this several times. When complete press the dough into about a 6 inch disk, wrap with plastic wrap, and refrigerate several hours or overnight.

4. This is the challenging part. Remove the dough from the fridge. It will be incredibly hard. Put the dough between two pieces of wax paper and begin rolling it out. Bakewise suggests that if the dough is too hard you should give it 10 seconds in the microwave at 30% power, but I didn’t try this. Once you have the dough rolled out, fold it over on itself, and roll it out again. Keep doing this until the dough begins to become reasonably flexible.

5. Bakewise recommends putting the dough through a pasta maker on its widest setting at this point, which turns out to be a remarkably good idea. Just make sure the pasta maker is completely clean, as the chocolate will pick up any dirt in it. Take about a quarter of the chocolate, and run it through the machine. Fold it back on itself, and run it through again. Do this until the chocolate is very flexible. Unfortunately, for a sushi shape, you cannot use the pasta maker, and will need to return to rolling out the chocolate by hand.

6. On a piece of wax paper, roll out your chocolate. It should be considerably easier to work at this point. However, because any flour or powdered sugar will discolor the chocolate, I didn’t use it. Instead, after every roll or two, pick up the parchment paper, and flip the rolled out chocolate onto your hand, (treat it like a pizza dough, and be careful not to let it fold over on itself), and then flip it back onto the wax paper. This will help the keep from getting the chocolate stuck to the paper. Roll the chocolate into roughly a rectangular shape, and use a pizza cutter to trim off any edges. You will not be able to make the chocolate as thin as seaweed, and wouldn’t want to, but try to aim for 4-5 mm at most. Once the chocolate is rolled out, let it rest for at least 5 minutes before using it to make the sushi (I found this made the chocolate a little less prone to breaking when rolled, good time to get the next piece of chocolate ready.

 

Chocolate sushi

Chocolate sushi “wrappers” (above) 

Cold Coconut rice (Must be completely cooled)  

Thinly sliced sticks of mango, pineapple, and kiwi (or whatever fruit you would prefer)  

Mango caviar 

1. Place a chocolate sushi wrapper on a piece of wax paper, oriented so that the longer direction is perpendicular to you (the photos are not oriented this way) 

2. Spread about ½ cup of rice on the chocolate wrapper, spreading the rice all the way to the edge nearest you leaving about an inch at the far end uncovered. 

3. Place the fruit in a line, about an inch from the nearest edge. 

4. Using the wax paper to help, lift the near end of the sushi, and begin to roll it over on itself. Roll it all the way over, trying to keep the roll tight. Press the chocolate together to seal the roll.

5. Immediately transfer the roll to a plate (be careful to support it under the center when moving), and place in the fridge for 5 minutes to let the chocolate firm up. 

6. When ready to cut, take a very sharp, serrated knife, and run it under hot water. Quickly dry the knife, and use it to slice  the roll into individual sushi. Top each piece of sushi with some mango caviar and serve.

Tropical Fruit Squares

The weather is starting to warm up in Virginia, and so I decided I wanted to make something summery. The result was these tropical fruit bars, which I thought turned out pretty well. I made mango, pineapple, and coconut bars. The recipe I used is based on a recipe for lemon bars I got from Joy of Baking. I found that the topping for these took forever to set, but then realized that I had neglected to put the flour in. It didn’t seem to matter though, as the bars ended up tasting great.

The recipe as I’ve written it here is enough to make one 8x8 pan of bars. If you want to make all three flavors, triple the recipe.

Tropical Fruit Bars

Makes 1 8x8 pan

½ cup (1 stick) Butter, room tempurature
¼ cup powdered sugar + more for dusting
1 cup + 2 Tbs all purpose flour (divided)
1/8 tsp salt

1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1/3 cup fruit juice (pineapple or mango juice, or coconut milk)
1/3 cup shredded coconut (for coconut bars only, optional)
Food coloring (optional)

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Butter an 8x8 baking pan, or use cooking spray. In a medium bowl cream together the butter and the sugar with an electric mixer until smooth. Add 1 cup of flour and the salt and beat until dough just comes together. Press the dough into the bottom of your greased pan. Bake the crust for 20 minutes, or until it is just beginning to brown. Remove from the oven and let cool on cooling racks

2. While the crust is baking, beat together the eggs and sugar until smooth. Add the fruit juice and stir to combine, then fold in the two remaining tablespoons of flour. If making coconut bars, fold in the coconut. I also used a drop of yellow food coloring in the pineapple bars, and a drop of yellow and a drop of red in the mango.

3. Once the crust is cool, pour the topping over the crust, and put back in the oven. Bake for 20 minutes or until the topping has set (doesn’t jiggle when you shake the pan).

4. Dust lightly with powdered sugar. Cut into bars and enjoy.

A Breakfast of Lessons Learned

This is my first attempt to join a blogging event, a breakfast themed recipe remix. I decided to make Pina Colada pancakes, an idea I had been tossing around in my head for a few years. I wanted to use pineapple rings and make the pancakes around them. Making these pancakes turned out to be more challenging than I had expected, and I learned something with each cake I made. I will recount for you briefly my experiences.

To start with I wanted to caramelize pineapple rings. I was using canned pineapple. For the first two rings I dipped them in sugar, hoping that this would make a nice layer of caramel around the pineapple. Just to see what would happen I also put an un-sugared pineapple in the pan. As it turns out, the sugar mixes with the pineapple juice in the rings, and quickly boils all over the place. The non-sugared pineapple actually caramelized much faster, and with a nicer golden-brown color.

Next came making the pancakes themselves. I’ve never been able to make those nice, perfectly round pancakes you see, probably because of the recipe I use (it’s on the thick side), but I like the taste just the same. For the first pancake I put the caramelize pineapple down in the pan first, and then poured the pancake batter over it. This turned out to be a really bad idea. Because there wasn’t a continuous layer of batter on the bottom, the pancake was impossible to flip. I ended up with a scrambled pancake with a pineapple in it. I put it in a bowl and set it aside to munch on while I was making the pancakes. Tasting that first pancake, I realized that it didn’t taste enough like coconut, and so I added shredded, sweetened coconut to the remaining batter.

Then, there was the issue of a sauce. I thought I would make a simple pineapple syrup. I put the remaining pineapple juice in a small saucepan, and brought it to a boil. I reduced the pineapple juice by about two thirds, but it never got any thicker, even after I cooled it off. As it turns out, if you want to make a syrup out of pineapple, you need to add some other things. Instead I had more of a pineapple concentrate. It still tasted good, but wasn’t thick enough to match the standard breakfast syrups.

Without further ado, here is the finalized pina-colada pancake recipe. The basic pancake recipe I based this off of is the whole wheat pancake recipe from the Tassajara bread book.

Pina Colada Pancakes

Makes ~ 10 medium to large pancakes

1 can pineapple rings packed in unsweetened juice, reserve the juice
2 cups all purpose flour
3 tbs baking powder
1 tbs salt
1 Tbls brown sugar or honey
3 eggs
1 ½ cups coconut milk
½ cup oil
1 cup sweetened coconut flakes
1-2 Tbls rum (optional)
1 Tbls butter

1. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar in a medium bowl (if you’re using honey, mix it with the wet instead of the dry ingredients)

2. Beat together the eggs, oil, coconut milk, rum, and a ½ cup of the juice from the canned pineapples.

3. Set the bowls aside (don’t mix the wet and dry together yet). Put a non-stick skillet over high heat, and add as many pineapple rings as you plan on making pancakes. The juice will boil out of the rings for a moment or two. Leave the pineapples on the heat until they are a nice golden color with a little brown, and then flip, doing the same to the other side. Remove the pineapples from the pan, turn the heat off under the pan, and remove the pan from the burner (the pan needs to cool off before the pancakes are made on it).

4. Fold together the wet and dry ingredients, along with the coconut flakes. Place the pan on a burner set at medium heat. Melt the butter into the pan. Pour out pancake batter to whatever size you want. Push one pineapple ring into the batter of each pancake. Let the pancakes cook until large bubbles begin to form in the batter. Flip the pancakes, and cook until done.