This week’s Iron Chef challenge features sushi.  I had one miserable sushi-making experience in high school featuring un-sticky rice and old nori, so I decided to stay away from anything requiring a sushi mat (or seaweed, for that matter).  I love inari, but had never made it before today.

Inari are pockets of fried, seasoned tofu filled with rice.  I love the simple goodness, but decided to change things up by filling my inari with some different things.  Rice noodles didn’t work very well (I couldn’t get them broken up small enough to stuff them in the tofu), but I had success with quinoa and enoki mushrooms.  I did make a rice-filled version using brown basmati.  I combined each filling with a mixture of rice vinegar, salt, and sugar, then filled the pockets and garnished with black sesame seeds (which aren’t just pretty; they add some nice texture).

I really enjoyed the quinoa inari and will be making more.  I had to used canned enokis, but fresh, cooked ones would have been better.  My basmati wasn’t sushi-rice texture, so it was a nice variation from standard inari.  Overall favorite: quinoa.  Try it!  The tofu pockets (called aburaage) come in a can and can be found at Asian grocery stores.