Crab Salad Nigiri Sushi

We had our monthly potluck for March today and I suggested that we do a green theme for St. Patty’s Day so the office brought in foods that were either colored green or environmentally green. Some of you may remember the St. Patrick’s Day Sushi Bento I made last year. The green dots are actually tobiko, or flying fish roe, but flavored and colored with wasabi. I have only ever seen this product at Marukai Marketplace on Dillingham, so yesterday after work, I picked up Buddy and we headed to that store.

We looked through the bento stuff in their Zakka section and I bought a set of food cups that I don’t have yet then walked around getting food. The store was freezing, so Buddy was clinging to my legs like glue until he saw the tank of dungeoness crabs and ran off screaming excitedly. Anyway, as we were heading towards the back corner area where their pickle demo station is, I saw another display of bento boxes. I’m walking over when I stop dead in my tracks.

There’s a laminated poster and I see my Frankenstein bento, my Somen Bird’s Nest Bento, my Mochi Bento, and a few more of my lunches. My immediate reaction was, “Holy crap, that’s cool!” but after that I was like, hey wait a minute, no one asked if they could do this. I found a store manager, got his card, and emailed later that night asking to speak to someone about at least getting credit for my work. A nice lady emailed and called me today to apologize and so now everything is all good. I’ll have to go shopping at the Dillingham store whenever I need a quick confidence booster, lol! I usually go to the Ward store because it’s closer.

I ended up making one of my favorite types of nigiri sushi: Crab Salad! This cute pair above is my test set that I made at home. I cooked 3 cups of rice this morning (too much) and added some ready made sushi vinegar I had on hand. I used a mold to make the rice balls, then wrapped the sides with strips of nori. For the filling, I just bought imitation crab sticks (has to be stick kind, not the chunks) and chopped it up and added mayo. I added a small dollop of the wasabi tobiko on top to conform to the green theme. I loved how it turned out!

I packed up the rice, nori, crab salad, tobiko, scissors, and spoons and made these at work, as I figured the nori wouldn’t keep very nicely on the way in to work. We had a nice looking platter in the kitchen, so I used that to put them on. The final presentation of them looked really cool.

I made about 20 of them as soon as I got in to work. Very nice and easy to do and very colorful! I’m a long-time wasabi hater, but the tobiko just has a very slight taste to it and no spice at all. People who don’t go for raw fish might be happy to try this, but perhaps the eggs might be just as bad or worse, haha!

Crab Salad Nigiri with Wasabi Tobiko

Ingredients:

• 2 cups rice, cooked (makes 4 cups rice)
• 4 tbsp sushi vinegar
• nori sheets
• imitation crab sticks
• mayonnaise to taste
• salt to taste
• wasabi tobiko (or regular tobiko)

Tools:

• scissors
• nigiri sushi mold (optional

Instructions:

1. While the rice is still hot, mix in the sushi vinegar. Mix until well combined and set aside to cool.
2. Chop imitation crab sticks thinly across the grain. This should cause the crab to flake very finely.
3. Mix in mayonnaise until it’s the consistency you want. Season with a bit of salt to taste.
4. Cut nori sheets into strips. Make small nigiri rice balls with mold or hands, then wrap nori strips around the sides, sealing the end with water. The strip of nori should be taller than the rice ball.
5. Immediately fill the top with crab salad.
6. Top with small amount of tobiko.
7. Serve immediately with soy sauce.

This weekend I’m going to be working on a bentomaking video, my first ever. Hopefully my kitchen idiocy doesn’t shine through too much.