‘Tis the Season for Sushi
Sushi, styled for the season, is a perfect holiday food
By Christina Owens
CTW Features
Nothing fishy about it: untraditional sushi made with fresh fruit, granola and rice imbued with coconut milk Image courtesy Jenn Kennedy, Kennedy Pix Photography, for Loews Santa Monica Beach
Sushi, the ultimate finger food, is making its way onto holiday tables – and not always with traditional trappings like wasabi and fresh ginger in tow.
“The word sushi actually refers to sushi rice,” says Trevor Corson, author of “The Zen of Fish,” (HarperCollins, 2007). “You can put anything in it and it will be sushi.” For the holidays, he recommends leaving behind the traditional ingredients such as seaweed, tofu and fish. Instead, improvise using western holiday foods with the traditional sushi rice.
Use red wine vinegar to flavor the rice and tint it red. “You could have turkey and cranberry sushi,” he says. Or, place a thin slice of rare roast beef on the rice, and top it with a little green herb.
To please guests for whom the holidays are not the holidays without sweet potatoes, Corson suggests filling sushi with candied sweet potatoes. “Chop sweet potatoes and simmer them. You could just use those pieces chopped fairly small as the fillings for a sushi roll,” he says.
For holiday versions of nigiri sushi – the hand-shaped oblong of rice with a thinly sliced topping – Corson likes to use a sliver of smoked salmon garnished with dill, a slice of prosciutto with some green pesto, or prosciutto and a bit of asparagus.
Not every chef endorses this sort of improvisation. Chef Greg Wangard of Ocean and Vine at the Loews Santa Monica Hotel, Santa Monica, Calif., is a sushi purist. His advice: Stick with traditional ingredients when serving sushi to guests. “I think the art and the presentation would merit more praise,” he says.
Wangard suggests using seasonal fish and other seafood that has a red color (red clams and some types of tuna such as Ahi) and adding green garnish with vegetables, herbs and seaweed.
“I would do really, really good sushi with the colors of the season and make each one look like a present,” he says. “You could blanche chives and use chives to make the bows.”
To create the effect of curled ribbons, he says, slice carrots or red beets on a Japanese mandolin.
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