Leftovers become herbed sushi rice patties

HERBED SUSHI RICE PATTIES WITH TUNA

The kitchen is not pretty.

In fact, it looks like a bottle factory exploded in there.

There isn't broken glass everywhere, just glass bottles and other containers occupying every inch of the kitchen counter and some are even on the stove burners.

Everything has to come out of the kitchen cabinets. And finally I can see what rubbish I have been storing all this time! Among other things, three barely filled bottles of apple cider vinegar, a bag of sugar in which ants are having a jolly time, and… oh, that’s where those mango pickles have been.

Everything is out because the cabinets will be ripped out. I have lived with this kitchen for almost 14 years. I didn’t plan it properly and simply went with a look I liked in a magazine without considering the way I worked in the kitchen. And as my interest in bread making has developed (and I’d like to think my skills have improved a little too), I have found that my workspace is no longer efficient. Also, I think the carpenter did a hack job of it and pieces of the kitchen are falling off.

So I haven’t been very enthusiastic about being in there, and have only been cooking simple meals.

But there's something to be said for simple too. I liked the lunch I made to take to work yesterday. A few days earlier, I pulsed up (I know, not a real expression; I used the “pulse” button on the food processor is what I mean) some English parsley, nuts and oil into a paste and mixed it through vermicelli together with some leftover slices of fried eggplant. A day later I cooked some Japanese sushi rice and made sushi rolls with cucumber and surimi. Yesterday, the leftover rice and leftover parsley pesto were mixed together with some canned tuna and hey presto, sushi rice patties.

I shaped them into disks by pressing a heaped tablespoon into a small cookie cutter and then seared their tops and bottoms in a hot pan. The result was patties that I could just pop into my mouth with pickled ginger and the usual shoyu and wasabi. I put a collar made from a strip of nori around two patties but gave up because it was too much trouble, didn't really add much and cut into my eating time.

Aren’t leftovers great?

Some dishes to make when the kitchen is fixed:

Noodle Soup with Spicy Minced Meat
Spiced Arabian Rice
Baked Crabs Sri Lankan Style