Sushi Bowl with Tilapia (Hwe Dup Bap)

This sushi bowl is a very healthy dish composed of fresh vegetables and raw tilapia sashimi also known as "izumi dai" in Japanese. A substitute for tilapia would be red snapper, tuna, yellow tail, or other whitish or reddish colored fish, but probably not salmon. Also a little touch of flying fish roe known as "tobiko" adds extra freshness and vibrance to the dish. When I go to a Korean restaurant or a casual Korean restaurant, I often get this dish when I crave for something fresh. I think a dish similar to this is probably also available at Japanese restaurant but not with the sweet and spicy dressing to mix the bowl with. I don't know the origin of this dish. Apparently, both Koreans and Japanese eat raw fish and due to the fact that overall flavor of this dish is more Korean and how it resembles "bibimbap", I would say that this dish is 100% Korean. But yeah, there are many gray areas between Korean and Japanese food when it comes to certain types of food. Anyways, this dish is something you might want to try because it's yummy.

Ingredients: tilapia fillet, mixed garden vegetables, alfalfa sprouts, tobiko (flying fish roe), carrot, cucumber, dried nori strips, toasted sesame seeds

Spicy dressing ingredients: Korean red pepper paste (2 tablespoons), sesame seeds (1 teaspoon), apple juice (1 tablespoon), vinegar (1 teaspoon), soy sauce (1 teaspoon), sugar (2 teaspoons)
Refer to this direction on my other page but forget garlic, sesame oil, and red pepper powder mentioned on that page for our purpose. Sesame oil will be added separately later.


1. The easy step would be to prepare a bowl of rice first.


2. Then prepare vegetables. Peel and slice carrots, cucumbers, and wash the mixed green vegetables.

3. spread out the greens on top of the rice in the bowl.

4. Place sliced carrots, cucumbers, and alfalfa sprouts.

5. Cut the tilapia sashimi fillet and place them on your bowl.


6. Add a spoonful of tobiko.

7. Add a final touch of dried nori strips and toasted sesame seeds.

Add the spicy dressing. I add a lot of them. Also add a table spoon of sesame oil. It helps the flavor and mixing.

Totally destroy it! Enjoy.

Sushi Bowl with Seared Salmon

I was inspired by Bibimbap to create a fusion mixing rice bowl recipe. Although sushi bowls like above exist already, I thought the choice of ingredients and the sauce were unique so I felt I should update the blog with this recipe. Basically the dish will create the flavor of sweet and sour seasoned sushi rice with crunches of main flavor through seared salmons, crab meats, and green vegetables. I think adding clover sprouts also brought out the freshness like a feeling of spring (though this is summer...). I forgot to add thinnly sliced nori on top, but even without them, this bowl has some good flavors.

First the sauce is important to this bowl. I mixed with 3tbsp of soy sauce, 1tsp of corn syrup, 1 tsp of mirin, wasabi, 2tsp of vinegar, and 1tsp of lemon juice.


Breaking the chunk of wasabi into the mix requires some thorough stirring.



Preparation of toppings

1. Cut and slice an avocado into long pieces. Refer to cooking tip section for information on how to cut an avocado.

2. Make crabmeat salad by chopping cooked crabmeat and mixing with some mayo like how used in California rolls.



3. Then cut a fillet of salmon and sear them on a frying pan with olive oil.


First heat the pan for 2 minutes in high heat and throw some olive oil on it.
As the hot surface of the pan sizzles outside the salmon, taking only a minute to cook would give you perfectly seared salmon. You just got to flip them once.


Presentation
First put some steamed rice in a bowl.

Organize the toppings nicely on your bowl even though you will completely destroy and devour them later.

Also add some clover sprouts and thinnly sliced cucumber with a sprinkle of sesame seeds on top.

And here comes the sauce! 2-3 full spoons of sauce, which is pretty watery will now do the magic. I hope you will enjoy this recipe!

Bibimbap

Bibimbap is the most famous Korean dish. In literal translation, it means mixed rice. You're basically mixing the rice with variety of vegetables (stir fried but sometimes with fresh vegetables) with sauce and sesame oil. It is quite healthy and delicious and I believe that's the reason why it became so popular in America especially among health conscious and trendy eaters. Few weeks ago, chef Mario from Iron Chef Show cooked Bibimbap in a stone bowl and amazed many people.

1. First, you need a carrot, zucchini, Shitake mushrooms, bean sprouts, beef, and spinach.

Sesame oil will be used for cooking these vegetables.

2. For carrots, you can either use them fresh or cooked. I heard it's better to eat them fresh because cooking destroys their vitamins. However, I decided to cook them for the taste. Personally I do not really like the taste of raw carrots but it's just me.


3. Then cook zucchinis. Use sesame oil also and just cook them for 1-2 minute until they're cooked.


4. For spinach, you want to boil them for 30 minutes to soften them up and pan fry them for another 30 seconds. You can skip the pan frying part if you want to.



5. You want to boil the bean sprouts for 30 seconds as well. Even though you could've skipped pan frying part for spinach, I recommend that you pan fry the bean sprouts with sesame oil for at least 30 seconds.


6. Ideally, you want to use Shitake mushrooms below. But because of the cost, you can substitute with other mushrooms. That's probably what I should do next time too since I spent a fortune on these mushrooms at a market. Slice them and cook with sesame oil.



7. For beef, you can use rib eye, loins, ribs, ground beef or steaks. Just make sure you slice them very thinly while it's still semi frozen. When fully defrosted, it will be hard to slice them thinly as it loses any strength of the tissues.

Use sesame oil to cook.
Then add 2 table spoons of soy sauce.
It will become similar to Bulgogi like the picture below although Bulgogi recipe is more complicated than just sesame oil and soy sauce.

8. Finally, you need to fry an egg. You can also use just the yolk for Bibimbap but I do like eating the white part as well. I cooked sunny side up in medium heat because later the yolk will be an important part of the mixing.

9. Now serving. Put rice into a bowl.

Place the fried egg over the rice.
Then pick out those vegetables that you stir fried earlier and throw them over the rice as well.

Yeah I organized them nicely for photography purpose. You can do that too if you have a guest to impress.

Now you need to make a spicy dressing which you will use to mix the rice and the vegetables. It's spicy and sour dressing called "Yangyum Jang" in Korean.

Use the red pepper paste, tea spoon of minced garlic, 2 table spoons of apple juice, tea spoon of sesame oil, Chinese hot mustard, and sesame seeds.


Put the dressing on Bibimbap and sprinkle sesame seeds over as a garnish. Enjoy!