Miso Soup, Omurice, and Sushi

This week, we tackled something a little out of our comfort range: trope-y Japanese food. In particular, neither of us actually knew how to make this stuff: salmon head miso soup, omurice, and sushi. The inspiration for this was actually a new all-you-can-eat sushi place by Jesus Green (shoutout to Yamato II), which we decided was too expensive but made us crave some Japanese stuff. Of course, if we did some Japanese food project, we had to include omurice (for the aesthetics, Fish insisted).

The project required a trip to the local fishmonger, from which we got two salmon heads (as planned) and some smoked eel (Six’s impulse buy…actually he was just too awkward to tell the fish monger that he didn’t want it anymore after realizing it was 8 gbp), as well as the ripoff Asian shop for a sushi rolling mat and some sushi vinegar. The theme of the day quickly became “screw the eel.”

On the way back from buying everything, we tried some of the eel (out of hunger), hoping it would taste like the Japanese smoked eel that usually goes in sushi, but it was…different. It was oily, squishy, and “gelatiny” (Six’s words). In other words, kind of gross.

Once we got back, the first step was preparing raw ingredients for everything. The sushi was relatively straightforward. We planned to put some imitation crab, smoked salmon, smoked eel, and cucumber and avocado. Fish has no concept of portioning, so she accidentally made way too little rice…whoops.

The miso soup ingredients were a bit more of a mystery. The salmon heads were going in for sure (maybe a mistake), and we had some leftover tofu and dried seaweed that we also threw in because they just felt right. We tossed everything into a pot and let it boil.

Lastly, the omurice ingredients were probably the most hit-or-miss. We basically just guessed and put some minced mushroom, diced chicken, spring onions, and garlic. Actually, this was the best part of the meal…

And of course, omurice requires hours of practice, the right equipment, and lots of eggs. We had none of these things. But, we practiced about four times before this (none successful, of course) and had about six eggs, so we could mess up maybe once (and we did). In addition to only having a sticky-ish pan with not-very-sloping sides, we also didn’t have anything to shape the fried rice with, so we used a rectangular lunch container, but the rice kind of fell apart while we were trying to put the omelet on top. Still, we got something that tasted really good, though its presentation was maybe a little questionable.

Between making the omurice and the sushi, we had an intermission in which we rescued the collapsing salmon heads from the soup (not pictured). They were coated in a layer of slime reminiscent of a snail trail (seriously, it was pretty gross). Six was pretty put off by this, but Fish tasted the soup, and it was actually not bad, so we kept making it.

After this little break, we tried to roll up the sushi! Six was really good at this, despite having never done it before. Fish was pretty bad, though, so her sushi is unpictured.

We ate a fair amount of the omurice and sushi as we were making them, so we weren’t too hungry by the time the soup was finished. We also felt rather sick, actually, probably because of that eel. It was way too salty and oily…and gross.

Despite this, we did sit down and eat a little more, cursing the eel the whole way and vowing to never buy more. Bonus photo of all the finished products together!