Sasha's Kitchen: Stuffed Teriyaki Rice Balls (Yaki Onigiri)

Today's recipe / blog post is my attempt at some Japanese street food. It all started when I had some delicious stuffed Mimi & Coco teriyaki balls at Smogasburg in Williamsburg a couple weeks ago.  They were so good that I educated myself a bit about this Japanese street food before trying to make my own. They're based on Yaki Onigiri, or fried Japanese rice balls that are the quintessential Japanese street food. Here's a sample of a traditional Onigiri recipe that I found on another blog.  I can't way this was a success in full but it was a good first step, as they still pale in comparison to the stuffed Onigiri at Mimi & Coco that I tasted.

Sasha's Stuffed Yaki Onigiri

cooked sushi rice (I started with 1.5 cups uncooked rice)

1/2 tsp rice wine vinegar

teriyaki sauce

1 lb ground grass fed beef

Top prepare this, first I cooked the beef for the inside of the teriyaki balls. I added about a quarter cup of teriyaki sauce and cooked until the beef was done and had a nice teriyaki flavor. Then, the beef cooled to room temperature while I prepared the rice. Once the sushi rice was done, I seasoned it with a bit of the rice wine vinegar, the same was as making sushi rice. 

When working with the rice for this recipe, make sure your hands are wet, as the rice is very sticky. Using your hands, shape some rice around a teaspoon or so of the ground beef which you should place in the center. Add some more rice and form a nice sized ball. Because of the stuffing, these will be a bit larger than traditional Japanese rice balls.  Continue to make a whole bunch of rice balls with the teriyaki beef filling. 

After you have formed the onigiri, it's time to grill them up. This is the tricky part - a couple of mine did fall apart but the rest did stay in tact. I think I can improve on this next time. Using a cast iron skillet, add a small amount of oil and grill on each side until it forms a crisp skin and are lightly browned - over medium heat. When all sides are grilled, brush on a layer of teriyaki sauce using a pastry brush.  Then grill all sides again. Serve hot!

Sasha's Kitchen: Stuffed Teriyaki Rice Balls (Yaki Onigiri)

Sasha's Kitchen: Nobu's Spicy Shrimp Tempura

I am about to introduce the most unhealthy thing I have made since starting this blog.  All those sticks of butter in my cupcake frosting don't hold a candle to this one.  I really usually try to cook on the healthy side, so deep fried food is a rarity in my kitchen.  However, I couldn't resist trying out Nobu's recipe for spicy shrimp tempura, and I was not disappointed.  Like most things that are incredibly unhealthy, the deep fried shrimp, coated in a spicy mayonnaise, dipped in ponzu sauce, was mouth wateringly delicious.  In fact, I, the normally somewhat health conscious (or at least fat conscious) chef who cooks using only organic vegetables, am almost ashamed to be writing this one up.  I probably wouldn't share this recipe at all, because of the guilt factor, if it wasn't so good . . .

Nobu, the flagship restaurant of Chef Nobu Matsuhisa is one of my favorite Japanese restaurants in New York for its non-sushi dishes.  The black cod with miso is another favorite of mine (much healthier, too I might add).  The recipe below is from Nobu's cookbook, Nobu Now.   When preparing this dish, I made a couple of slight modifications from Nobu's recipe, while I scaled back the recipe so I would not have extra.    The dish was amazing, but given the cardio-scare from this dish, it is probably not something I will make again.  Then again, it's nice to treat yourself every now and then.  In addition, it is worth adding that I discovered that another blogger has done a very similar adaption from the original Nobu recipe.

Tempura Batter (adapted from Nobu Now recipe)
1 egg yolk
3/4 cup ice water
1 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp lemon juice

Spicy Mayonnaise
1 egg yolk
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1 tsp rice vinegar
1/3 cup canola oil
4 tsp sambal
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes

3/4 lb shrimp
chives
ponzu sauce
lemon juice

To prepare this recipe, I first made the batter and set aside.  To make the spicy mayonnaise, I bet all the ingredients except the canola oil in a bowl, and then I emulsified by adding the canola oil slowly and beating with a whisk the entire time.  I added both sambal and red pepper flakes to get the desired heat.  You could certainly make it spicier if you like.

One of the things I dislike most about seafood is shelling and deveining shrimp.  However, the deveining process (which I detest) is absolutely necessary.  For that reason, I purchased fresh shrimp that were already shelled and deveined at my local fish market in Park Slope.  To prepare the shrimp, I dipped or dredged each shrimp in the batter and then deep fried it in our electric hot pot, with the heat setting for the oil at about 355 F.  My husband, Brad, actually did the deep frying - he used about 3 inches of canola oil for the small to medium sized shrimp that I had purchased.  Each one took about three minutes.

When the shrimp were done, I coated them in the spicy mayonnaise and served with chives, lemon juice and ponzu sauce.  My husband actually preferred simply dipping the shrimp in the mayonnaise because it stayed a little crispier that way.

This was delicious, but like I said, I prefer to eat to healthy to make this one again!  This was only our second venture at deep frying.  The first was out New Orleans Beignets (doughnuts).

This was a fun Japanese recipe.  I really enjoy all of the ethnic fusion cooking I have been experimenting with in many of my recipes lately.  I am really itching to do some international travel and taste testing on foot.  It's been almost a year since my last trip to Europe and I am feeling some wanderlust right now.  There's such a long list of places in the world I want to see and eat my way through, yet never enough time and money to do it all.

Shrimp

Sasha's Kitchen: Nobu's Spicy Shrimp Tempura