Tropical Avocado Eel Roll

With this warm weather, I like to eat really light dish for dinner. Among the light dishes, my favorite one is sushi. Within the wide variety of sushi, Dragon roll, Spider roll, and Metropolitan roll are my all time favorite. Since those rolls are quite popular in North America, you will find an extensive list of recipes if you type on any search engine. Therefore I would like to introduce to you a less well known sushi roll that tastes as delicious as those famous roll and that is perfect for this warm and humid day. This roll is known as the Tropical Avocado Eel Roll.
The Tropical Avocado Eel roll is a roll of cucumber, mango, shrimp, caviar that are topped with avocado and roasted eel and served with lychee wasabi dip.
I like so much the special, refreshing and tropical taste of this roll that I have tried to reproduce this dish. Here is my recipe for the Tropical Avocado Eel Roll.

Ingredients:
- Cucumber
- Mango
- Shrimp (about 10 medium size)
- Tempura Flour (about 1 cup)
- 1 Avocado
- Roasted Eel
- Nori
- Sushi Rice (about 2 cups)
- Japanese Vinegar
- Toasted White Sesame seed
- Japanese Mayonnaise
- Lychee sirup
- Eel sauce
- Wasabi
- Sushi mat (if you use a sushi mat, put a thicken transparent cling so that the rice will not stick on the mat)

Procedure
1) Cook the Sushi Rice

2) In the meantime, slice cucumber and mango into thin long sticks also peel the avocado in thin layers. Put them aside.

3) Then do the Tempura Shrimp:
3.1.) Clean the shrimps and remove the shell of the shrimps. If the shrimp contains the head, remove it.

Remove the black line running down the back of the shrimp by using a small, sharp knife: make a shallow cut along the length of the black line, then lift it out.  After having removed the black line for all the shrimps, put them under cold water to make sure everything is cleaned. Pat them dry with a kitchen towel.

3.2.) Prepare the tempura batter. Either make it from scratch or buy a bag of tempura flour. If you buy the tempura flour, just follow the direction mentioned on the bag to make the tempura batter.

3.3.) Heat up vegetable oil (I usually use Olive oil) in a wok over medium high temperature.

3.4) When the oil is ready, dip the shrimps in the batter. Then gently drop them into the oil. Lightly fry about 2 to 4 minutes per side (this really depends on the heat you are using).

3.5) Remove the tempura shrimps from the wok and put them on a paper towel to remove as much oil as possible from them. Put them aside.

4) Roasted eel are sold in Japanese supermarkets in refrigerated or frozen packages. Re-grill the eel in an oven. (Before putting the eel in the oven, you can brush it with some eel sauce). When it is done, slice them into thin layer and set them aside.

5) When the rice is done, put it all in a big bowl. Pour few spoon of Sushi Vinegar. I usually use this Sushi Vinegar that I used to buy in Chinese supermarkets in The Hague (The Netherlands):

Unfortunately I could not find this brand in North America. Usually the sushi vinegar in North America is tasteless so if you buy those tasteless sushi vinegar, you need to add a bit of salt and sugar into the bowl of rice. Mix all well until all the sugar and salt are melted.

6) Spread the rice on the nori sheet, and spread some white sesame all over the rice. Then flip it over the mat so that you see the nori sheet. Spread some mayonnaise on the nori (not too much mayonnaise otherwise it will be quite heavy !). Then spread the caviar all over the nori then lay the cucumber and mango sticks you have precutted, and line up some tempura shrimps.

7) Roll it inside-out style and cut the endings, but leave the rest whole for now. Although the below video is nothing to do with this recipe, it is still nice to see and it may be helpful for people who do not how how to roll it inside-out style.

8) Cover the top of the roll with the layers of avocado you made with the peeler, and use the bamboo mat to tighten it to the roll.

9) Carefully spread some roasted eel on the top side of the roll.

10) Cut the sushi roll into pieces. You can cut sushi any way you like but the most common method is to cut in the middle then sides. With each next cut the knife will slower and slower slice through sushi as it is covered in sushi rice. Wipe the knife and wet it. Repeat this step for each roll or more.

11) Make the Lychee Wasabi sauce:
2 tablespoon of lychee sirup + 1/2 teaspoon of eel sauce + add a pinch of wasabi. Mix all.


12) Spread the Lychee Wasabi sauce in a diagonal on a plate. Then spread some soy sauce slightly over the Lychee Wasabi sauce. Then place the cut sushi roll on the plate.

It takes some time and patience to make this dish. But the taste of it is so special that it is worth the effort ! It is a nice light dish to savor with some ice tea at the lawn during a warm summer evening. I believe that your guest will be amazed by this sushi roll.


Enjoy it.