migrant|roo

Like most London-workers, I've become a serial sushi eater. I've only ever tried to make sushi at home a couple of times before, enjoying limited success.

A couple of weeks ago when Monkey and Rob came to stay for the weekend I decided to give it another go, but this time I was going to buy the best salmon fillet I could find. After a bit of hunting around on that Sunday morning with Rob, it turns out the best we could find was also the biggest. So I made a shitload of sushi!

The salmon was an organic skinless fillet from Waitrose, and I picked up some nori sheets too. I didn't have any sushi rice so I used unwashed (don't laugh - not washing keeps the starch in making it more sticky) basmati rice.

One thing nobody tells you is that when making sushi (especially a lot of it) the rice gets absolutely EVERYWHERE. It sticks to your hands, gets trodden into the carpet, in your hair - everywhere. I find having wet hands makes it much easier to pick up rice without it all sticking to your hands.

Rolling was good fun - the first one was shit, the rest were good. My knife was just about sharp enough, but making sushi really makes me want to splash out on one of these bad boys :)

Big fish, sharp knife

Attempt #2 at rolling - looking good

All rolled

The spread (well, half of it..)

Cut rolls

It's rare that I eat so much sushi that I feel completely full. This was one of those times. We ate, and ate and ate and there was still a massive slab of salmon left over.

In what has become a slightly recurring theme, I cooked a bit of an adventurous dinner on this lovely, slow Sunday.

Starter - Mussels, cooked in a proper Masala sauce Tikka Masala has a bit of a bad reputation (with me, anyway). It's usually a bland, blood-red (thanks to food colouring) sat-fat fest. You might argue that the Tikka Masala sauce was invented for an Englishman so isn't Indian anyway, so who cares if it resembles nothing of Indian cooking? I do!

So here's how I made a "proper" masala sauce in a blender/processor:

Loads of garlic and ginger Tumeric Corriander (both fresh, ground and seeds) Couple of cloves Hot red chili powder Generous squeeze of tomato puree Oil Salt Pinch of sugar

Whizz it up in your whizzing machine until it's a fine paste. I reckon this would store for weeks at least.

I've fancied mussels for ages, so I thought i'd see how mussels cooked in a masala sauce tasted.

I fried the paste in a hot, dry pan until it started to change colour and smoke. Then I added equal parts cream and milk until it looked like there was enough for the mussels to cook in. Throw in a bunch of live mussels (cleaned of beards) and put the lid on for 4-5 minutes. When you put them in, all the mussels are closed, like this:

A good way to tell when they are done is to wait for them all to open.

Dump out into a bowl and serve with fresh corriander and naan bread cut into pointy shapes:

It was absolutely delicious!

Main - Trout in japanese broth with spring onions and mushrooms.

I threw together a thin marinade of soy, rice vinegar, nuoc cham (ingredient borrowed from Vietnam!), seasame oil. I left the trout fillets in the marinade for a good 4 hours.

I made a paste of ginger, lemongrass and honey. I smeared this onto the trout fillet, and cooked on a griddle pan for 2-3 minutes on both sides.

Meanwhile, I took the marinade for the fish and added it to a pan with hot water, pinch of salt and a bit of soy. I then added a bunch of very fine slivers of spring onion and sliced mushroom to the japanese broth, and some very finely chopped ginger. Just wait a minute or two for the onions and mushrooms to go slightly soft. I wanted to intentionally keep the broth light and subtle.

Serve the broth over fresh pasta, and the trout fillet on top.

Knocking out more fresh pasta

Trout fillets, served on pasta in a spring onion and mushroom japanese broth

The trout wasn't burnt (despite how it may look in the photo) - it's the honey in the glaze that caremelised ;)

Both dishes were great fun to cook, but it was the mussels that won our tastebuds over. It takes 5 minutes to cook as the pasta can be prepared well in advance, and it tasted absolutely bonza.