Vegetarian sushi cubes with crispy tofu and glazed pumpkins

My newest small kitchen gadget, the Rice Cube, inspired me to make this dish. It turnes vegetarian sushi making into pure enjoyment! I have the feeling that you will be seeing many food cubes in my presentations in the future. My partner is more the sushi cooking type, but he has shown me his methods, and now I'm ready to publish a vegetarian sushi post.

I have been wanting to try more crispy tofu methods for a long time and have been contemplating what to combine with it. I thought that it would be good with a sushi style dish.

I also wanted to include a vegetable on the side, and pumpkins and squash suit well this combination. I had two munchkin pumpkins that I glazed with a teriyaki style glaze.

Crispy tofu

400 g tofu

1 tsp groundnut oil (for roasting)

1 tbsp mirin

½ cup semolina

3 tbsp groundnut oil (for frying)

Remove the excess liquid from the tofu and cut it into cubes. Brush an oven dish with groundnut oil and place the tofu cubes there. Bake them at 150C for one hour or more until you are happy with the firmness of the tofu cubes. The intention is to make them nice and dehydrated with a crispy surface, but still a soft middle.

After the baking, roll the tofu cubes in mirin and then semolina and fry them briefly in hot groundnut oil.

Glazed pumpkins

2 munchkin pumpkins or one medium sized pumpkin

1 tbsp groundnut oil

50 ml mirin

50 ml soy sauce

2 tbsp toasted sesame oil

3 tbsp maple syrup

1 tbsp miso

Cut the pumpkins into small wedges and remove the seeds. Brush them with groundnut oil and roast for about 30 minutes at 150C.

Make the glaze by carefully mixing mirin, soy sauce, toasted sesame oil, maple syrup and miso. Pour the glaze onto the pumpkins and roast them until the glaze has thickened and coated the pumpkin wedges. Stir them occasionally during the roasting.

Sushi cubes

1 cup sushi rice

1 ¼ cup water

1 tbsp brown rice vinegar

1 tsp sugary water

¼ tsp salt

1-2 tbsp green nori sprinkle

A few strips of sushi nori

Soak the rice in the water for 30 minutes and then simmer it for about 10 minutes until the water has absorbed. Drizzle some brown rice vinegar to it to taste and also add little water with dissolved sugar in it and a sprinkle of salt. Let it cool.

Shape cubes from the rice. I added green nori sprinkle to one half of the rice and wrapped nori strips around the plain ones.

Serve all components together. They all taste cold as well, but it's also nice when the tofu and glazed pumpkins are warm. This is also a great lunch for the next day.

Your VegHog