Tag: teriyaki

Baby Panda Onigiri

This morning we found Candy Cane rappelling over the fireplace grate!

Last night for dinner I really wanted to try out a baby panda onigiri set I bought at a Goodwill in New Jersey in the fall. To be clear, that’s rice balls in the shape of baby pandas, not containing baby pandas.

I’d been wanting to try the fancier rice balls for a while now, but it’s hard to find the molds around here unless you want to import them, which can be prohibitively expensive. But this set was only $1.99, and it was still new in the package, which was a perfect combination for me.

Basically, you cook up your sticky rice, scoop it into the mold (the front and the back are both shaped), and then press it really firmly together. Then you place a sheet of nori between the white cutter and the flexible red board, and press down really firmly to punch out the shapes. You can then apply the nori shapes to the formed rice, sometimes using a dab of water to make the seaweed stick properly. This kit even makes little nori tails for their tiny rice butts! Now, there were a whole lot more instructions written on the back in Japanese, and I have at best a kindergartner’s grasp of written Japanese (probably worse, actually), so I mostly went with the little pictures on the front.

Despite not having a lot to go on, I think my baby panda onigiri turned out pretty cute, especially for a first try! I served them alongside onigiri made in my triangular mold, which I stuffed with teriyaki chicken. (The chicken is the brown stuff sticking out of the rice in the above photo; it looks a little weird but it hasn’t gone off, I swear.) I think I added a little too much sauce to the chicken, as it was a bit salty. I also learned for future reference that I’ll need to shred the chicken more finely if I want the rice balls to stay intact. It’s a learning process, but it’s one I’m greatly enjoying!

Grilled Salmon & Trout Teriyaki Rice Bowls

It’s been unseasonably warm this fall, so I thought that another light, refreshing meal was in order. The girls requested rice bowls, so that’s what we ended up doing! I found a few pieces of both salmon and trout on special at the local grocery store, but neither one had quite enough to feed the entire family. In the end, I served each person a slice of each kind of fish.

I marinated the fish in Kikkoman Teriyaki Marinade & Sauce, and then my husband put it on the smoker grill. I always cook this kind of fish on a baking sheet even on a grill, and even if it’s skin-on like ours normally is, because once done it tends to fall apart into the machinery beneath. While the meat was cooking, I put on the rice, steamed some bok choy, thinly sliced some carrots, cut up one of my many home-grown cucumbers, chopped the onion tops from my garden (they’re a great substitute for chives), and cut up some enoki mushrooms. By the time all that was done, the fish was ready. Then all that was left was to assemble the bowls, and to eat!

Teriyaki Grilled Salmon

Last night the family wanted burgers, but while my kids would eat them every day given half the chance (especially Thing 2), I wanted something a little bit different. That being said, I still didn’t want to cook inside, since it was quite hot and humid. My solution was found at the fish counter at the grocery store.

I marinaded a piece of skin-on salmon for about thirty minutes in Kikkoman Teriyaki Marinade & Sauce, which is not my usual go-to for teriyaki. When I’m just spreading the sauce over the top and baking my fish, I generally use Golden Dragon Thick Teriyaki Sauce, which, as the name implies, is a thick sauce with more of a consistency of a ranch salad dressing (although nothing like the taste). The Kikkoman version, however, is a much thinner sauce, more like a broth, and it’s great for a marinade if you have the time. To add to the flavour, I had my husband throw the salmon on the wood pellet barbecue alongside the burgers and the tiny potatoes, while I steamed the spinach inside. The salmon was moist, tender, and absolutely perfect when it came off the grill. The rest of the family was having fancy maple ale burgers, but I think I got the better end of the deal by a long shot.

Teriyaki Trout Rice Bowls

Given all of the feeding (overfeeding?) that goes along with birthdays around here, I thought that a simpler supper was called for last night. Luckily, rice bowls are a family favourite (which you’ve probably noticed if you’ve read through my older posts), and teriyaki trout is something the kids ask for anyway. Well, they ask for teriyaki salmon, but trout is a fraction of the price, and they’re almost as happy with that.

So I cooked up some basmati rice, baked trout fillets with teriyaki sauce, steamed some bok choy in the microwave, and served it all with leftover hard boiled eggs from the fridge that had to be eaten up. That particular batch of eggs had spectacularly pale yolks, by the way, despite tasting nigh on identical to darker-yolked eggs.