I have been promising to post this really special steamed nori roll for a few weeks now. This dish was one of the many gorgeous offerings at the Melbourne restaurant, Madam Fang when it still existed. I don't go out to dinner much these days and I haven't even looked down that lane where it used to be, so I like to pretend its still there. In my mind I walk in and have it all again: steamed seafood nori rolls to start, silky bantam poached in coconut stock for main and glutinous black rice for dessert.
How lucky are we that Beh Kim Un from Madam Fang published this recipe in the Sunday Age, an eternity ago, and my wife cut it out and filed it away. So thank-you to Kim, I am grateful to you.
Cook these as a starter for your next dinner party, they are easy to prepare beforehand. Just pull them out of the fridge and let the Thermomix do the cooking while you enjoy the company of your friends.
Prepare the cashew cucumber dipping sauce first for the most efficient use of the Thermomix and your precious time.
Cashew Cucumber Sauce
Ingredients
50g roasted unsalted cashews
1/4 onion
3 coriander roots
100g palm sugar broken into walnut sized pieces or brown sugar
60g cucumber chopped into 4cm pieces
60g lemon juice
50g fish sauce
Method
Add cashews to the Thermomix bowl, lock the lid and pulse on turbo two or three times until the cashews are roughly chopped. Put these cashews aside in a small serving bowl.
Add onion, coriander roots and palm sugar into the Thermomix bowl
Pulverise on speed 10 for 5 seconds
Add cucumber and chop on speed 5 for 1 second
Add lemon juice and fish sauce, stir on speed 1 reverse blade until sugar is dissolved
Pour the sauce over the chopped cashews
Steamed Seafood Nori Rolls
Ingredients
300g Gemfish fillet or any mild white fleshed fish without skin
200g shelled prawns (about 10 large prawns)
1 stalk of lemongrass
1 red chilli
6 coriander roots
3 cloves of garlic
10 kaffir lime leaves
2 egg yolks
50 ml fish sauce
1 packet nori sheets
1 sushi mat (bamboo mat to roll nori rolls with)
Method
If you bought prawns in the shell, you need to shell and devein them now.
Chop the lemongrass with a knife, (shock horror you still need one sometimes) into two centimetre lengths and place in the thermomix bowl
Add chilli, coriander roots, garlic and lime leaves
Chop on speed 10 for 10 seconds. Doesn't that look beautiful, don't forget to smell it!
Roughly chop your fish (with a knife)
Add the fish chunks, prawns and egg yolks to the Thermomix bowl
Process for 15 seconds on speed 7. You should now have a smooth fragrant paste.
Lay a nori sheet on your sushi mat and with a kitchen spatula, spread the paste on the nori along the edge closest to you in a strip 3cm wide and 2cm high.
Roll up the nori sheet around the fish paste to form a firm cylinder. The nori will probably form a double layer or more around the fish mixture.
You should end up using about five nori sheets ie five rolls.
Put 1000g of water in the Thermomix bowl, Put the varoma in place, lay the nori rolls on the Varoma tray, putting one in the bottom part of the Varoma if they don't all fit.
Cook on Varoma temperature speed 3 for 18 minutes
Slice the nori rolls into four centimetre lengths. Serve warm or at room temperature, dipping in cashew nut sauce or better still, pour the sauce over the top.
Enjoy
