myogazushi

My student and friend Kazumi loves to cook, so she is always sharing new food ideas and recipes with me at our lessons. At a lesson last week, she gave me some pickled ginger, pickled myoga and a recipe for myogazushi (ginger shoot sushi). She said that her family eats this dish in the summertime because it is so refreshing.

Myoga is a type of ginger and I think it may be the shoots of the ginger. In Hawaii, the only time our family ate myoga was for special occasions. It was served raw and usually accompanied cooked tako(octopus) and a miso (soy bean paste)sauce as a pupu (appetizer).

Since Kazumi gave me all of the pickled items (photo of the pickled myoga), all I had to do was cook the rice and edamame, then assemble the sushi.

Shinshoga no Amazuzuke(Pickled Spring Ginger)
600-800g shinshoga (spring ginger)
150g sugar
20g salt
2 cups vinegar

1. Wash the ginger and wipe dry.
2. In a bottle, put the ginger. Heat the other ingredients and cool.
3. Pour over the ginger and store in the refridge.

Myogazushi (Ginger shoot sushi)
3 cups rice
3 cups water
2 tablespoons sake (rice wine)
60g myoga (ginger shoots)
60g shinshoga amazuzuke (pickled spring ginger)
1/4 cup edamame (soy beans), cooked and shelled
1/2 cup vinegar
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
kelp

1. Put the vinegar, sugar & salt together, set aside.
2. After blanching the myoga, place into the mixture in #1.
3. Cut the pickled spring ginger into 2 cm slices
4. 1 hour before cooking the rice, wash it and drain well. Put some konbu (kelp) into 3 cups of water to make "kelp water". *leave the kelp in for about 30 minutes. Add the kelp water to the washed rice and add the sake. Let the rice soak in the kelp water and sake for about 30 minutes. Cook the rice in this water mixture.
5. Take the myoga out from mixture #1 and slice thinly, save this mixture.
6. After the rice is cooked, lay the rice out into a hangiri (bamboo tub) or anything that can spread the rice out flat to cool a bit.
7. Use 80cc of mixture #1 and sprinkle onto the rice while fanning with an uchiwa (hand-held fan) and fluffing the rice with a shamoji (rice paddle).*it helps if you have a helper fan while you fluff, if not, just take turns at fanning and fluffing.
8. After the rice is seasoned, add the sliced ginger and mix well. Top with sliced myoga and edamame.
9. Enjoy!

NOTES: I didn't have konbu, so I used wakame. I think the flavor is similar but not as strong as konbu. This dish was very sappari (a term we use when describing food or action meaning refreshing), the sourness from the pickled items matched nicely with the seasoned rice. I served it with some grilled salmon and veggies. (Thanks Kazumi!)

Have a nice week!