Dahlia Lounge

I always enjoy dining at Dahlia Lounge. It's upscale but not stuffy, and the food is great. A friend and I had dinner there last night (as part of Seattle's Restaurant Week), and it was great, even if it wasn't one of my favorite meals that I've had there.

I don't always take a picture of a restaurant's bread selection, but this one turned out well so here it is. We both went for the plain sourdough first, but it turned out that the walnut and olive (?) bread was excellent.


Here's the appetizer "salad" I started out with. Shrimp and octopus, mmm. I don't remember what the "sauce" was.


My entree: Pan seared Alaskan halibut, la ratte fingerling potato, ham hock, collard blossoms, with ramp vinaigrette. Very good, but if I could go back in time I might not have selected it. It's halibut season now, so every restaurant's serving it, and it's just not that interesting. Still, the server recommended it so I felt that I would regret it if I didn't order it.


J.'s dessert, Tom's World Famous Creme Caramel. I've never understood why this dessert has this name. I suppose it must have some culinary history I'm ignorant of, because as far as I've seen, when people talk about a Tom Douglas restaurant's dessert, it's always the triple coconut cream pie. Plus, I like custard and this is good, but it's basically flan and flan isn't my favorite dessert.


And here's the star of the show, the triple coconut cream pie. I love the flavor of coconut, but I'm not a fan whatsoever of the shavings. I happily put up with them in this pie, however. It's wonderful. The recipe for it is in one of the Tom Douglas cookbooks that I actually own, but I haven't gotten around to making it myself yet.

Homemade California Rolls & Ebi Nigiri

Before this weekend I'd never attempted to make my own sushi rolls. Considering how adventurous I usually am with food preparation (though not, you know, in a hygiene way), and how much I love sushi, it's kind of odd. In any case the inspiration this time came from my bf, who can eat massive quantities of rolls (so he usually comes away from Japanese restaurants a little bit hungry, because massive quantities of rolls = $$$), and was craving them. So we decided to try making our own, which would be good in a financial sense, and also fun!

Verdict: it WAS both fun and delicious, and did make more financial sense, but I have to say that it's hard work! Really, many props to sushi chefs, whose creativity and skill I'd never quite appreciated to this level before, now having tried to do what they do.

We decided to keep it simple for this first excursion (though it was amazing how complex even 'simple' stuff is!) and made California rolls and ebi nigiri. While not the perfection you'd get in a real sushi place, we were pretty proud of how our attempts came out! (Plus, no matter what it looks like, it's still delicious, so we had that going for us.)



First, we had to assemble equipment and ingredients.

Equipment:
- rice cooker
- bamboo mat
- skewers
- plastic wrap
- super sharp knife
- 1 bowl of cold water
- 1 bowl of ice water
- large non-metallic bowl

Ingredients:
- imitation crab meat (usually made of fish)
- avocado
- English cucumber
- shrimp (headless)
- tuna sashimi (maguro)
- nori (toasted seaweed)
- short-grain (sushi) rice
- tobiko (little fish eggs)
- sesame seeds
- rice vinegar
- sugar
- Kosher salt

First we made the sushi rice. Washed the rice thoroughly (meaning several changes of water until it ran fairly clear) then let it sit in water for 30 minutes. Used the rice cooker to make 3 cups (uncooked) rice. I worried that there wasn't enough liquid, but followed the rice cooker's instructions and it came out fine (if you make rice on a stove top, use equal amounts of water and rice). After it was done I let it sit and steam in the cooker for about 15 minutes. In the meanwhile, I made the vinegar mixture by heating the rice vinegar, sugar, and salt in the microwave until the latter two were dissolved. Scooped out the rice into a large non-metallic bowl and let it cool for a bit, then poured the vinegar solution over it. Folded the rice together well (our research on sushi rice showed that we weren't to mix/stir the rice, as this would break the grains). Set aside to cool completely.

In the meanwhile, we started to prepare the ebi. Set a pot of water to boil. Skewered shrimp onto skewers through the head and body, all the way to the tail, so that they were stretched out fairly straight (this is to keep them from curling when they're cooking). Tossed them into the boiling water for about 5 minutes, then removed them to an ice water bath to stop the cooking process (and conveniently, to be able to handle them without burns). Twisted the shrimp off the skewers. Shelled them up to the tail. Sliced them carefully down the middle of the belly without cutting all the way through. Spread them open and removed/washed away any visible veins. I wish I'd taken photos of this process but you can find helpful videos on YouTube.

Then there was the slicing of the imitation crab, avocado, cucumber, and maguro.



Finally, assembly. We made ebi nigiri, and also used a couple of slices of maguro to make nigiri as well. That was fairly easy.

Next came the rolls! Wrapped the bamboo mat in plastic wrap. Put a sheet (or half sheet, depending on how big you want your rolls) of nori on top. Wet hands thoroughly with water -- very important step or you'll have sticky rice all over you -- then took a portion of completely cooled sushi rice and spread it over the nori. I'd have to wet my hands every so often, whenever they dried enough that the rice started sticking to them. Flipped the nori over so that the rice was on the bottom. Layered in the filling (we skipped the Kewpie/Japanese mayo that some places use) -- depending on if you use a half or whole sheet of nori you can put in more or less. Carefully used the bamboo sheet to roll it up. I learned that a very important step here is to, after you've made the first roll-in, make sure it's tucked in really tight, and continue to make sure it's tucked in tight as best as you can while you're rolling it up, because otherwise the roll will be really loose and the filling will fall out easily.







After the roll has been completed, you'll want to take your very sharp knife and dip it in a bowl of cold water. Slice the roll in half, then place the halves side by side. Dip your knife in cold water again and slice familiar-sized pieces. After every slice be sure to dip your knife in water. We learned this was a super important step to making sure that cuts were easy (otherwise the sticky rice will make it very difficult to cut).





We then rolled each piece in tobiko (or sesame seeds). In theory you could roll the big roll in tobiko, then slice into portions, but some tobiko would inevitably stay on the cutting board and get on consequent rolls in random places, which doesn't look as nice.

Serve with wasabi, soy sauce, and green tea, and enjoy!



We made a ton of rolls that we couldn't even finish, and have ingredients to make even more. Definitely the way to go if you know someone who's a bottomless pit when it comes to rolls! Next time we'll branch out and try some other kind of filling ingredients ... like shrimp tempura! Yum.

Friday Dinner: Seafood and Vegetable Medley

This week was supposed to be a boring Friday night dinner. Trix and I both had food aplenty in the house and didn't feel like spending the time or the money to get more. We listed the items we each had, and the only things we had in common were vegetables -- and then, not even the same vegetables. Just in the fact that we both had vegetables. We could just have a generically themed dinner. What about a vegetable medley? I suggested. Trix said she had some scallops, and would use those in her medley.





Sometime during the week I discovered Melissa Clark's recipe for roasted shrimp and broccoli (one of the veggies I had), and I decided I wanted to make it, so the theme turned instead to a seafood/vegetable medley.



What started out as a plain, generic veggie medley therefore turned into a couple of delectable, repeatable meals -- one I'd personally like to have again and again.



The recipe for the roasted shrimp and broccoli is easy. Melissa's recipe calls for a few spices, but you could probably just toss the whole thing with salt or salt and pepper, maybe some butter, and it would be equally as good -- maybe even better. This is a recipe I'm definitely going to experiment with. As for roasting the broccoli in the oven, that's something I should have thought of doing long ago. I'm the one who loves broccoli pizza, after all, and go through the same steps when I use it as a pizza topping. So why haven't I ever just made it on its own?



Trix turned hers into a seafood/vegetable casserole by adding pasta and cheese to some squash and mushrooms.



To finish, we spent hours making raspberry & brie fillo rolls from scratch...okay, no we didn't. We took the easy way out and had some frozen ones from Trader Joe's.



They were yummy, but in my opinion, they really are better served as appetizers (as the box suggests) instead of dessert, even though to me, raspberry and cheese just screams dessert. It's not very sweet though, which is why the appetizer verdict. In retrospect I should have served it with some of the lemon curd I recently made from my Meyer lemons; I still have 10 in the package so I may yet do that. Perhaps the sweetness of the lemon curd will make these rolls work better as dessert.



On the side I had more veggies -- the shredded half of a head of cabbage, to be precise. I love stir-fried cabbage, especially when you cook it until it's completely wilted with some hot sauce and soy sauce or salt. Mmm delicious.



Roasted Shrimp and Broccoli (recipe by Melissa Clark, spice conversion by The Wednesday Chef)

Note: I halved this recipe with no problem, and used bottled lemon juice because I had it.

Ingredients

• 2 pounds broccoli, cut into bite-size florets
• 4 tablespoons (1/4 cup) extra virgin olive oil
• 1 teaspoon whole coriander seeds (or 1/2 teaspoon ground)
• 1 teaspoon whole cumin seeds (or 1/2 teaspoon ground)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1/8 teaspoon hot chili powder
• 1 pound large shrimp, shelled and deveined
• 1 1/4 teaspoons lemon zest (from 1 large lemon)
• Lemon wedges, for serving

Method

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
2. In a large bowl, toss broccoli with 2 tablespoons oil, coriander, cumin, 1 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon pepper and chili powder.
3. In a separate bowl, combine shrimp, remaining 2 tablespoons oil, lemon zest, remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt and remaining 1/2 teaspoon pepper.
4. Spread broccoli in a single layer on a baking sheet. Roast for 10 minutes.
5. Add shrimp to baking sheet and toss with broccoli. Roast, tossing once halfway through, until shrimp are just opaque and broccoli is tender and golden around edges, about 10 minutes more.
6. Serve with lemon wedges, or squeeze lemon juice all over shrimp and broccoli just before serving.