Spicy California Roll Sushi Nachos

I got an email from Lee this week saying, "This is happening this weekend." I took one look at I Wash, You Dry's blog about these, and my answer was, "YES!"

I bounded into my office to tell everyone the genius of sushi nachos and reaction was split 50/50 between yum and gross.

Lee whipped these up on Saturday night, and my verdict is that they're definitely awesome.
You've got the delicious consistency of nachos, the flavors of a California Roll.  East meets Southwest.  Talk about fusion.

The ONLY downside to this dish is how many dishes it requires.  And that eventually, you run out of the sushi nachos, making you sad.

Here's the ingredients:

For the Sushi Rice:
1 cup sushi rice (uncooked)
1 1/2 cups water
1/2 cup rice vinegar
2 tbsp sugar
2 tsp salt

For the Spicy Sauce:
1/4 cup mayo
1 tsp rice vinegar
1 tsp sugar
2 tsp sriracha
dash of sesame oil

For the Nachos:
1 package of won-ton wrappers
canola oil for frying
1 package imitation crab meat
1 can crab meat
1/4 cup carrot matchsticks
1/3 cup cucumber, cut into thin slices
4 tbsp chopped roasted seaweed wrappers/ Nori

For the Soy Sauce Drizzle
2 tbsp mayo
1 1/2 tsp soy sauce

1. Rinse the sushi rice really well. Then put it in a pot with 1 1/2 cups of water.  THEN bring it to a boil with the rice in the pot.  Stir it every now and then so it doesn't stick all over your pot.  When it starts boiling, cover it and let it sit for 15 minutes.

 2. In another pot, combine the rice vinegar, sugar and salt. Stir on medium high until the salt and sugar is combined.  (Your pot won't have brown stuff at the bottom of it, Margy perma-burnt ours trying to make oatmeal.)

 3. Combine the spicy sauce ingredients.  Adjust the amount of sriracha to how spicy you want your nachos.  

 4. Cut the wontons in half and fry them a few at a time. Dry them on a bed of paper towels.  Salt to taste.

5.  Stir the rice and the rice vinegar mixture together.

6. Take the crab meat and mix it with the spicy sauce. 

7. Mix the soy sauce and mayo.  (Weird, I know, but it's awesome.)  If you like breathing fire, here's a good place to add wasabi... we did not. 

 

 8. Slice the carrots up, or buy them already in matchsticks (looks like cheese!)  We got really tiny cucumbers so they pose as jalapenos... but they're not....

 9. Put the wontons down as a base, then the rice, then the rice, then your carrots and cucumbers.

10. Finish it off with the crab mixture, the seaweed and then the soy sauce drizzle.

11. Eat... with a fork.

Sausage and Crab Stuffed Mushrooms

My Uncle Bill would hate this recipe.  Uncle Bill hates mushrooms... the texture, the taste, all of it.  My Uncle Bill is about the last person you would expect to have a nemesis, but mushrooms are truly his.  When we were kids and we would get pizza with him, he always got sausage and onion instead of our family's usual sausage and mushroom. I thought he and my aunt were exotic. 

I figured out later that they were not exotic, they were crazy.  Mushrooms are the best. 

One of Lee's first dinners for me included stuffed mushrooms and that pretty much sealed the deal for me.  This recipe is a little different from the original, but no less delicious.  It's a little lighter than the traditional all sausage or my favorite cream cheese and crab.

When mixed together, the crab and sausage are a powerhouse of tastiness.  


This is a great make ahead dish,  Lee was making sausage for breakfast and saved a portion of that cooked sausage for this recipe. He also mixed everything and stuffed my mushrooms early in the afternoon and refrigerated them until I was ready for dinner.

Crab Rangoon Pop Tarts with Sweet and Sour Sriracha Frosting

This recipe was inspired by a friend of mine's daughter Audri Schramm.  A couple days ago she told her mom that they should make crab rangoon pop tarts. Her mom posted this on Facebook, and I immediately starting thinking about how I could make this happen.  I told her mom that I would create this and blog about it because that's what I do.  This weekend I decided to get some things to test out on making these and nailed it on the first test batch.

I call these pop tarts because they look and taste like pop tarts, but I fixed them in the oven.  I suppose you could half bake them and then finish in the toaster. I might try this for testing purposes but not sure if it would work so if you do try it that way be careful.

These would be perfect for parties because they taste a lot like crab dip on crackers, but way better and portable...like a poptart!   The frosting is a perfect blend of sweet and spicy.  Don't let the sriracha scare you, it just adds a little heat, no burning.