use real butter

If you know me even a little bit, you know that I love sushi. Going to college in southern California sealed my fate in so many ways including sushi and Jeremy. My litmus test for my first dinner date with Jeremy was at a popular sushi bar in Pasadena. If he couldn’t handle the fish – out the airlock! But he loved it. Good thing too! When we first moved to Colorado, we were stunned at the number of sushi restaurants in Boulder. There are several – at least ten off the top of my head. But not all sushi restaurants in Boulder, Colorado are created equal. It didn’t take long before I zeroed in on my favorite.

sushi tora in spring

Sushi in Boulder is not inexpensive if your reference point is a major city on a coast. Once you get over the initial sticker shock, you come to learn that there is bad expensive sushi and good expensive sushi. Sushi Tora obviously boasts the Good Sushi. I’m no expert. I just know what I like. Their fish is consistently the freshest, best-prepared, and highest quality. I should note that I’m more of a sashimi and maki girl than a nigiri girl. It’s where I take out-of-town guests who have a hankering for sushi. It’s where I take my parents. They LOVED Tora and my folks are the first to wrinkle their noses and point out when a restaurant doesn’t serve satisfactory food (that’s where I get it from). I had to forgo sushi during my chemotherapy in 2008. Can you guess the first place we went for dinner when I got the all-clear from my oncologist? Tora, of course!

kampachi (amber jack) crudo with tobiko, orange oil, garlic, pepper

There have been some changes since I started going to Sushi Tora in 2006. Change in ownership for one. Change in head sushi chef too. For the past few years, my dining schedule has been pretty busy with so many places to choose from. I try to keep the variety alive and well. I’d go to sushi for more lunch meetings than anything else and that was always easier at the tables than at the bar. Sitting at the bar is the finger on the pulse of a sushi joint – sitting at a table is neither here nor there, but my white friends tend to prefer it. I saw the changes, but they didn’t register in my head until I was invited to come in and meet the new chefs last December. I’m slow on the uptake, okay.

beef short rib and cabbage fried wontons with sweet soy sauce and spicy mustard

pork and ginger gyoza with ponzu

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: plum blossom sushi roll

I walked up to the register and placed a pair of sunglasses and a Camelbak pack on the counter. I mustered the friendliest smile I could, as it had been a long and hot day. That counter felt so nice and cool on my hands that I was tempted to stretch my upper body across the surface and roll around on it, I was so flush from the sun and heat. The REI employee asked me what I was going to do this weekend, it was Memorial Day weekend after all. I was caught off guard. Holiday weekend? I knew it was a holiday weekend, but I didn’t actually have anything planned other than work. “I need to work this weekend,” I offered with another smile – this one more from embarrassment than trying to mask my exhaustion. Apparently, that was the wrong answer. He was mortified. “You can’t work! It’s going to be beautiful! It’s a long weekend – you should be drinking cold beers and kicking back!” I neither drink cold beers nor do I kick back. I opened my mouth to start explaining how I a) love what I do and b) live where people go on vacation, but he cut me off insisting that I promise I would have some fun this weekend. Yes, yes of course.

Friday was brutal for this mountain girl as I had an afternoon bridal shoot in Denver… and the high was 93°F. It didn’t even get to 90°F when I was shooting in Death Valley – this was the hottest I’ve experienced so far this year *gah*. It wasn’t a heat wave, it was a heat smackdown. As Erin deftly negotiated Denver’s Memorial Day weekend traffic and Manisha navigated the way to the botanical gardens, I was jerry-rigging a bouquet in the backseat. Flowers don’t lie. Those suckers wilted before I could fire off the first set of photos. Bummer.

oh, that’s sad

Luckily, Kitt had a nice bunch of peonies that Erin wrapped into a pretty bouquet while the hydrangeas were dying before our lenses. We lucked out: a giant cap of clouds hovered above us and our bride remained cool as a cucumber. At the end of the shoot, Manisha grinned and said, “You suffer for your work, girl!” I was sweating like a pig. 93°F is why I live in the Rockies and not on the Great Plains.

kitt with living flowers

a laughing erin walks kitt to the next bridge

wearing her mother’s wedding gown – very special

You can see more photos from the shoot on my photoblog. After three hours, we hugged Kitt good-bye and piled into Erin’s car to go roast in more Friday-afternoon-of-a-long-holiday-weekend-Denver-rush-hour-compounded-by-poorly-timed-construction traffic. I was hot, tired, dehydrated, sticky, smelly… I had goose poop and tree sap stuck between my sandals and my feet. Jeremy took me to happy hour so I could rehydrate with water in one hand and lemonade in the other. Boulder’s Pearl Street was hopping Friday evening.

another beautiful day in paradise boulder

And here we are at the end of May. I’m looking around wondering where the heck THAT month went. Our weather is finally stabilizing up here in the mountains such that it’s safe to put the deck furniture out without worry that another 4 inches of snow (or 12 for that matter) will blanket everything. I did not lie to the man at REI – we’ve been working all weekend. You know how some people winterize their house? We summerize ours. That entails putting ultraviolet-reflecting stickers on our windows to prevent bird crashes (especially the cute little hummingbirds), house maintenance, sanding and oiling our deck furniture, designing a system to keep us from incinerating on the deck during daylight hours, making multiple trips to the hardware store, and so on and so forth. Did I mention that I love my power sander? Well, I do.

while jeremy put the stickers up, three hummingbirds flew right up to him

kaweah supervises the progress

However you spent your weekend, I hope it involved some good food, great people, and happy memories. Boulder County Public Schools are out for summer and the neighbor’s trampoline has been getting non-stop use since Thursday afternoon. Instead of hearing children squealing and laughing in the evenings, we hear it all day. It’s awesome. Now that Nature has rubbed my face in summer, I’m over the initial shock. I am loathe to turn on the stove or the oven if I can avoid it on those hot days (however, it’s a dry heat), which is why sushi is so delightfully perfect.

start with masago (flying fish roe) scallops, avocado, and maguro (tuna)

mix up the scallops and masago with a little mayo

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: dragon roll sushi

The Daring Cooks are making sushi this month! We have done quite a bit of sushi making (and more eating) here at urb so I was quite excited for the selection. Even with the familiarity, I was hard pressed for time to get this done. Because of that, it is with great sadness and yet relief that I am withdrawing from the Daring Cooks. This will be my last DC challenge.

daring cooks – one last cha cha cha!

I really have to thank the ladies of the DARING KITCHEN: beloved Lis of La Mia Cucina and sweet Ivonne of Cream Puffs in Venice. These two fine women give and give and give to all of the Daring Cooks (and Bakers). I don’t know how they do it, but I admire them for their love and enthusiasm, and especially for their friendship. Thanks, you beautiful babes!

Here’s the official line: The November 2009 Daring Cooks challenge was brought to you by Audax of Audax Artifex and Rose of The Bite Me Kitchen. They chose sushi as the challenge.

And once again, I colored outside of the lines which is probably why I should be leaving the DCs… I didn’t use their sushi recipe, I used the one I always use because we had a very small window of time to get this done. But I still learned a new technique and the sushi totally rocked (because it always does). I decided to try my hand at tempura frying based on this recipe from Allison who does all things sushi-related.

i thought the egg and ice water looked neat before mixing

whisking the wet and dry ingredients together

I think the biggest barrier to making tempura for me has always been the mystery of how to do it. Allison’s recipe is SUPER easy to throw together and so the true hurdle in tempura is the frying. I hate frying, but the more I do it, the more I lose my dread of it. We decided to tempura fry some alba clamshell mushrooms, asparagus, and shrimp. I didn’t have any softshell crab on hand, but tempura shrimp in a roll is another favorite of mine.

ingredients including: alba mushrooms, masago (fish roe), quail eggs

the goods: maguro (tuna), large dry scallops, wild-caught gulf shrimp

**Jump for more butter**