Japanese food with shrimp and craband My friend Sonia is an amazing cook and is currently teaching me Asian cooking. This recipe, her take on a Japanese sushi or seafood platter, is delicious and really fun with seaweed wraps.
No fork or knife needed, just a teaspoon to scoop each bite from a communal bowl resting on a piece of seaweed. While this recipe serves 4-6 people, I usually make it for 2-4 people because I like to have leftovers (which goes well in the microwave). With four guests, everyone has their own seat.
This dish is similar to a sushi platter; however, what sets sushi rice apart from regular rice is the addition of rice wine, vinegar, and sugar.
Since this recipe helps prevent heartburn, we’re omitting the vinegar. Fish on rice, even if it’s cooked, tastes a lot like sushi. (For sushi, mix a teaspoon of sugar with a tablespoon of rice vinegar. Once the rice is cooked, add the vinegar/sugar to dissolve it.)
Sometimes a seafood dish is meant to be cheap, and that’s okay. However, just use imitation crab made with Alaska pollock and king crab.
However, Sonia’s recipe does include shrimp and real crabmeat, which adds about $20 to the price. Her recipe calls for 8 ounces of real crabmeat and 8 ounces of shrimp. You can use cooked shrimp or fresh, peeled and deveined shrimp. Personally, I prefer fresh shrimp because I find them crunchier.
This recipe includes a few ingredients you may not have or know about:
Gimme Seaweed Snacks (cheaper in stores than on Amazon), Kewpie mayonnaise, and furikake. Furikake is a seasoning mix that is sprinkled on top of the dish before cooking.
It’s made up of sesame seeds, seaweed, and sugar. All the ingredients can be found in the Asian section of your grocery store. Although this dish does contain some cream cheese and Kewpie mayonnaise, this amount of fat per person is acceptable for people with reflux.
Each person gets a package of seaweed. When you open them, you’ll see the thin, rectangular sheets. Place a spoonful of the seafood wrap in the seaweed, wrap the contents, and eat it with your fingers. The seaweed has a truly unique and delicious texture. You can make a wrap for one or two bites.
RECIPE
The cooking time is about 45 minutes. For this dish, I recommend a small 2-quart Pyrex dish or a similarly sized ovenproof dish; I measured mine: 7 x 11 inches.
Ingredients
For the rice
- 2.5 dl sushi or aborio rice
- 3.5 dl water
- For the seafood mix
- 400 g (one package) imitation crab
- 225 g (2.5 dl) real crab (claws are usually the cheapest)
- 1.25 kg fresh peeled and deveined shrimp or cooked and peeled shrimp will also work.
- 6 dl Kewpie mayonnaise
- 6 dl low-fat cheese
Note: For the cheaper version, use only imitation crab, about 500–590 g (1 1/2 packages of 400 g). Leftover Kewpie makes an excellent sandwich.
- Salads
- Furikake
- Sriracha (optional)
- Preparation
Place rice and water in a rice cooker or saucepan and bring to a boil. Then cover the saucepan and reduce heat to low for 12 minutes. Turn off the heat and let the rice sit for 5-10 minutes before fluffing.
Once the rice is covered, turn on the oven and preheat to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (175 degrees Celsius)
While the rice is cooking, roughly dice the crabmeat, shrimp, and crabmeat. In a small bowl, mix the cream cheese and Kewpie mayonnaise together with a spoon until smooth.
Then, mix the cheese and Kewpie mixture into the fish and stir until the fish is lightly coated and the three fish are evenly distributed. If more mixture is needed to moisten/cover the fish, simply use Kewpie mayonnaise.
Once the rice is fluffy, spread it evenly in the bottom of the Pyrex dish. The rice layer should be even and about 1.2 cm thick. Then, drizzle a small amount of Kewpie mixture over the rice and sprinkle furikake evenly.
Add the fish mixture and coat the rice evenly. Then sprinkle furikake lightly and evenly over the rice, then sprinkle some Kewpie back and forth over the rice.
Bake for 10 minutes for cooked shrimp and 12 minutes for fresh shrimp at 175 degrees Celsius (350 degrees Fahrenheit).