Extreme Sushi

Miles and I made a new friend yesterday. Meet 'extreme sushi', so raw there isn't even any rice. We decided in the interest of health, detox and being thinner for the wedding (ha!) to try one night a week of raw food. Rather depressed by visions of endless salads I was excited to find this sushi recipe. It uses a pâté in place of the rice, making them rich and still filling. They are noticeably harder to roll than normal sushi, though, as the pâté is much squishier than rice and so just wants to come squirting out the end!

We made our pâté from carrot and red onion, hence it is rather more 'orange' than the 'pink' of the original recipe. Frankly, there was substituting going on all over the place - we used rocket instead of watercress and sun-dried tomatoes instead of the evil cucumber. Also, I didn't quite have enough cashews so almonds found their way in too. I think the moral of the story is, this is actually a very flexible recipe so I suggest going wild (well, as wild as vegan raw food night gets!).

(For a master class in rolling sushi, the first episode of the Post Punk Kitchen TV show has all you need to know. Have a look at the video and the sushi tips page on their website.)

The recipe we used was originally printed in Waitrose magazine a couple of years ago as part of a feature on the café at Triyoga in Primrose Hill, which, at the time, served mostly raw food (it's changed management since then, I believe).

Pink Sushi

Serves 6 as a starter
Preparation time: 40 mins, plus chilling

11g pack nori sheets
100g bag watercress, stalks cut off
1 carrot, peeled and cut into julienne strips
2 x 5cm pieces cucumber, cut into julienne strips
1 avocado, peeled and sliced
1 tsp tamari

PATE
1 small red pepper, deseeded and chopped
1 medium beetroot (raw), peeled and chopped
100ml olive oil
50ml tamari
2 tbsp cider vinegar
200g cashew nuts
1 tbsp roughly chopped ginger
1/2 red chilli, roughly chopped
1 tbsp maple syrup

Put all the pâté ingredients into a blender and blend till completely amalgamated and smooth (may need to scrap down the sides a few times). Refrigerate the mixture for 2-3 hours to firm up or, if you're in a hurry, freeze it for 30 minutes.

Lie a nori sheet on a sushi rolling mat or clean tea towel. Arrange a handful of the watercress on the lower half of the sheet then spread about 1½ tbsp of the pâté over the watercress. Arrange some carrot, cucumber and avocado over the pâté, then a little more watercress. Carefully roll up the seaweed to create a neat roll, using a dab of tamari to seal the sushi. Slice with a sharp knife and serve immediately.

What I Did on My Bank Holiday

Given that the weather has now returned to regulation overcast it seems like a good time to celebrate the surprise sunshine which blessed the bank holiday weekend.

Miles and I had a lovely weekend filled with cats and family visiting. Mum and Dad's kittens (well actually gangly adolescents now) came to stay with us on Saturday as part of our training programme which will hopefully mean that they can come and stay with us when my parents go away, rather than us having to up sticks to west London for the week. Pip and Agnes are getting very good on the tube (I think they've had 7 journeys on it now) and, thanks to a ballsed up Piccadilly line on Saturday, they've now done one bus ride too.

They seem to like our bedroom the most and the pictures show them not helping me change the duvet.

On the Monday we went round to Miles' brother's to view the bounty of their wedding list which had just been delivered. I was delighted to see that all the linen they'd asked for is blue and goes very well with the quilt that I made for them!

We spent the afternoon playing darts in the garden (so much harder than it looks!) and then Miles and I went blackberry picking with his parents in the wild little woody bit that covers one of the train tunnels.

Yesterday, I got round to cooking up our share of the Bounds Green Blackberry Bounty with some cooking apples and then used the puree to make a charlotte (so tasty we've almost finished it between the two of us!).

On the craft front, I'm plugging away at my ripple crochet blanket. I'd like to finish it by Christmas which should be possible - I think I have about one third done so far. Better get up some speed surfing those ripply waves!

Food, Glorious Food

As I mention in my profile, I spend much of my day thinking about food. Since most of my time is taken up with reading, I find the mind needs to wander and food seems a legitimate channel! I made a couple of things I was really pleased with this week. The first was an Indian meal which was absolutely fantastic. I'm blowing my own horn here, but it really was! Apologies for the bad picture but the camera batteries died after only one shot and we were too hungry to mess about finding more! Here in all their fuzzy glory are steamed basmati rice with a spiced coconut dahl, green bean-sesame curry and beetroot salad.

I must hasten to point out that the dahl and curry are both from recipes so to be honest I don't deserve much credit, I just did what I was told! The dahl was from an old Waitrose magazine I think - basically cooking red lentils in stock, frying up some onion, garlic, ginger and curry powder, then adding these to the lentils (keeping a little for garnish) along with some coconut milk. By far the best dahl recipe I've found, and very easy. The real stars of the meal were the green beans which I made from this recipe posted by Indira on her Mahanandi blog. I've been thinking about using the sesame mixture on other vegetables, maybe courgettes...? I urge everyone to give the recipe a go - so so good.

On the other end of the food spectrum, I made some cupcakes for Saturday tea. I did the Brooklyn Brownie cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. I didn't do the icing, instead I put a little maple syrup on the top and stuck on some chopped pecans. Now I know it's tantamount to blasphemy for someone who loves chocolate as much as I do but [whisper] I think if I had to choose, I'd take the green beans!

I'm going to lie down for a minute and hope the world gets back on an even keel.