April 1st post #2: Frushi

Doesn't this roe look delicious?

It was delicious, but it isn't roe.

APRIL FOOLS (suckah)!!!

I'll give you more details about this homemade roe tomorrow, but I can tell you this much: it's sweet, not savory.

Back when I posted about making sushi at home a friend from Chicago asked me if I'd ever made frushi (aka fruit sushi) before.  And with that, Katie had inadvertently challenged me.

Here's the backstory: there's this brunch restaurant called Orange that makes what they call frushi.  It's basically fruit on top of a sweet sushi rice.  It's been close to 10 years since I've had it but I remember it was amazingly delicious.  I think they infused their rice in some kind of sweetened herbal tea. YUM!!

So I wanted to try to recreate that at home.

But I think I took it a step further with my homemade caviar.  And the extra little decorative touches I added to my frushi.

Everything on this plate is 100% sweet and 100% delicious.

Want to see more awesome pictures and read about making your own "tuna tartare", "spicy tuna rolls", "roe" and "nigiri"??

First thing you'll need is fruit. Lots of delicious, delicious fruit. Here we have cantaloupe, strawberries, kiwi, apple, cara cara orange, grapefruit, pomelo (like a milder, sweeter grapefruit), and champagne mango (the creamiest, most delicious mango you've ever eaten in your freaking life. Find them and you'll never eat a regular mango again...)

You'll also need to make some frushi rice.  Now if you do a search for "frushi" on google you'll find lots of recipes in which the rice was cooked in coconut milk.  I was going to do that, but TJs was out of coconut milk.  And then, I remembered the frushi I had at Orange.  Perhaps they used coconut milk, but what I specifically remember is an herbaly tea flavor.  So I decided to (gasp) make up my own recipe!

Now I can't say the rice was absolutely perfect.  But I think it was pretty darn good.  Next time (if there is a next time...) I'd like to try the coconut recipe.

I followed the directions on my rice cooker, but instead of using water I used an infused tea.  So I brewed an extra strong cup of white tea (at least twice as much tea as normal) with an additional 1 tsp lavender buds and some cardamom seeds thrown in there for some added spice.  

Man, I love lavender.

I think it could have used more lavender (and cardamom), but a hint of it was there.  Plus, I think other fruity herbal teas would have worked even better than the white tea I used.  But you use what you got. 

Once the tea is done add sugar or honey until desired sweetness level is reached. Then just pop it into your rice cooker with some sushi rice.

The darkness of the tea did cause my rice to turn brownish.  No worries, it just looked like brown rice sushi. (Remember: I live in California.  And Californians love their brown rice.)

When the rice was done I transfered it to a bowl, added a little bit more of the tea and some agave syrup (similar to how you would add the rice vinegar + salt to regular sushi rice) and tossed it together until it was cool and nicely sticky.

So now we need to work on the fruit part of frushi.  Look at the pomelo- it was my first time trying it. So amazingly delicious! They're deceivingly large because the rind is so thick. (Just like underwear models, the packaging overemphasizes their size...)

Ok, back to frushi. I'll go through how I made the different components, one at a time.

For the sushi/nigiri I just sliced the fruit to resemble raw fish and topped it on the sweet rice.  Nothing fancy there. But I did color some creamed honey I had with green food coloring and put it between the rice and fruit- just like wasabi.  Ahh, the little touches nobody will ever notice.

Next up: spicy tuna rolls

Now originally I tried using these all natural fruit roll up strips from Trader Joes but they were just too firm and the rice wouldn't stick to them.  Fruit maki FAIL!  (You need ghetto fruit roll ups if you really want to make frushi maki rolls at home.)

So I started looking around my kitchen, trying to think of something else to improvise maki rolls.  What I found were my handy dandy circle cutters. Check 'em out!

Playing around with the cutter and an apple I had an awesome "ah ha" moment. What I did was use a small-ish circle cutter to cut out a cork sized piece of apple.  Then I cored out the inside and filled it with chopped strawberries (spicy tuna) and a bit of a kiwi (avocado)

They were tiny, but looked so good!

And the black sesame seeds on the outside?  Yea, those are kiwi seeds. (Another "ah ha" moment.)  I swear they are the identical size/color/shape to sesame seeds!

Next up: tuna tartare

In Puerto Rico I had tuna tartare with small pieces of chopped apple (unbelievably good combo).  Here I just replaced the tuna with strawberries.  Using a larger circle cutter, I just placed the cutter on the plate, filled it with my strawberry/apple mixture, pressed down a bit to really pack it in there, and slowly lifted the cutter up. Viola! Tartare (using fancy schmancy plating).

And finally, my favorite frushi on the plate: roe.

To see how I made these little suckers you've gotta tune in the next few days.  They're ridiculously cool (and easy) to make.

Sorry for the suspense, but this post is getting too damn long.  I wonder how many people made it through to the end...

Buen Provecho!
Jackie