Japanese-style Rice Dishes

Hello everyone, today Nicole is going to introduce various kinds of Japanese rice dishes~

Firstly, i'd like to recommend a brand of raw Japanese sushi rice--- SunRice Japaneses Style Sushi Rice. As a sushi lover, I have to say that, rice choosing is the most basic yet important thing that you have to pay much attention on it.














SunRice Japanese Style Sushi Rice is a soft and tender short grain rice ideally steamed to accompany Japanese meals. When cooked it is clingy enough to be eaten with chopsticks. It is perfect for sushi, and is also great for rice desserts. Often mistakenly referred to as "sticky rice" which is not true. Sticky rice is a glutinous rice used mainly for desserts. For best results, rinse 3-4 times before cooking and do not cook with salt, to preserve the delicate flavour. SunRice Japanese Style Sushi Rice is available in 750g packs and you can find it in any Japanese/ Chinese/ Korean convenient supermarkets.
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NOW, here are some SPECIAL Japanese dishes based on rice.. I know you will love them! ^o^

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• Japanese-style plain Rice

Properly cooked rice is the foundation of a traditional Japanese meal, and you absolutely cannot skimp on the steps detailed here if you are aiming for anything approaching authenticity.

Rice is the staple of Japanese food, and making it just right can be rather difficult if you don't know how. If you think you will be preparing rice regularly, an electric rice cooker will make your life so much easier.

Japanese rice is a very particular variety. For traditional Japanese dishes you simply cannot substitute long-grain rice, jasmine rice, basmati rice, Carolina type rice, and so on. I sometimes hear people saying things like "But I can make onigiri with jasmine rice just fine, as long as I cook it so it's mushy and the grains stick together". No no no no no. A good onigiri, a good sushi roll, a good nigiri-zushi, and most of all a good bowl of rice does not have mushy rice.

Ideally, the rice should be quite fresh. The best rice is new rice called shinmai, purchased within 3 months of harvest. Unfortunately, it's just about impossible to buy rice that fresh outside of Japan. Just buy the best rice you can afford, such as the SunRice Japaneses Style Sushi Rice. Once you learn how to make rice properly, you will really taste the difference between different kinds of rice.

Some popular 'first grade' Japanese rice varieties include Sasanishiki, Koshihikari andAkita Komachi. They tend to be expensive.

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• Smoked Salmon Temari Zushi

This is another type of sushi which is great for parties. Temari are small cloth balls made from leftover scraps of kimono fabric, and temari zushi are meant to look like these colorful toys. You can make temari zushi with any number of things, such as thinly sliced sashimi grade fish, boiled and butterflied shrimp, thinly sliced and cooked or uncooked vegetables, and even thin slices of cheese. It is made by thinly cut slices of pale pink smoked salmon and tiny amount of cream cheese inside. It seems quite non-traditional but it’s a great combination. The key is to make the temari zushi on the small side since they are quite rich.
As with the hamaguri-zushi, these don’t require any soy sauce for dipping.











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• Shell-shaped sushi (Hamaguri-zushi)
  

As be shown, the first is hamaguri-zushi or clam sushi is supposed to look like a clam, but to me it looks just as much like a little yellow flower. It can be filled with any kind of sushi rice and, with lemony smoked salmon, mitsuba or flat-leaf parsley and white sesame seeds, wrapping in a usuyaki tamago or thin omelette. It’s related to chakin-zushi, where the omelette is wrapped in a bag shape and tied, but slightly less fiddly since all you have to do is fold it into quarters.
Besides making a very pretty spring party dish (for an appetizer maybe, or as part of a buffet), these work very well as bento items too since the sushi rice has good keeping qualities, and the omelette keeps the rice from drying out. Plus you can just grab them with your hands to eat.

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• Kurama Mixed Rice

Kurama Mixed Rice is an amazing Japanese rice dish mixed with soy sauce-infused chirimen jako (dried, salted, tiny fish, a fantastic ingredient we'll get to in a minute) and sansho (intensely aromatic, seductive accent, ditto about getting into in a minute). In addition, chirimen jako are tiny young sardines or anchovies that have been boiled then salted and dried, thus naturally preserved. You reconstitute them with boiling water and add to an omelet or quickly deep fry and sprinkle over salad or, well, rice.











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• Chestnut Rice

Chestnut rice is another incredible Japanese style rice with a play of delicate flavors. You steam the chestnuts with rice, brings out their natural sweetness in a much more subtle. The rice is a mixture of Japanese short grain rice and sticky (glutinous or sweet) rice, which creates a delightful texture and infuses even more of that natural sweetness. Finally, the sake and the salt here nicely pop all these tastes. The complexity of flavor you find in this simple dish is just amazing.

YOU HAVE TO TRY THEM!!!

In addition, both Kurama Mixed Rice and Chestnut Rice are selected from the blog The Japanese Food Report, it introduces lots of delicious Japanese special dishes and provides recipes, come and vist it!!