Surfeit of Ikura

[SuzySushi]

Okay, so my husband came back from the Japanese market yesterday with a lot of fish. We gorged ourselves on sashimi for dinner last night, but are still left with a surfeit of ikura (salmon roe).

How best to use it tonight? It's just the two of us, plus our 9 year old if she'll deign to eat a few "pearls." I'm tired of rice, so don't want to do nigiri or chirashi-zushi, and it's too much to simply use as a garnish.

Blini with Ikura?

Fettuccine?

Other main course ideas?

[SusanGiff]

Omelets? Sort of an all-egg theme?

[Kent Wang]

Deviled eggs. Scoop only a bit of the normal filling and then pile the ikura on top.

[torakris]

Are you sure you don't want rice again? This is really good!

It is a nice pasta or pizza topping though

[HKDave]

It sounds like you have fresh salmon roe, not (salted) ikura. If you want to salt it, which would allow you to keep it longer, method here: http://www.thesushibar.com/ssushi_facts.shtml#Ikura

or here:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/re...6_14702,00.html

If you want to use it now, a simple pasta/cream/dill sauce would work fine. Or pile it on potato latkes or corncakes, with sour cream. Or mix in a potato and cucumber salad?

Edited to add: I wish I had your problem.

Edited June 1, 2006 by HKDave (log)

[Sunny Simmons Steincamp]

I saw something that looked delectable in a back issue of Saveur magazine (a friend moved and gifted me with eight years' worth recently.) I can get the details and pass them along tomorrow (I let my brother borrow & peruse some of them,) but basically they were beautiful little bites of avocado & crabmeat mixed together and molded into rounds the size of a jumbo sushi roll and topped with caviar. I haven't tried making them yet, but they're on my short list.

A staple appetizer for my family get-togethers is a really simple "caviar pie." We whip up cream cheese with a bit of mayo, a drizzle of Tabasco, a smidge of lemon juice, and a dash of Worcestershire sauce, then put it all in a small springform pan and chill until firmed up. When chilled, remove from the springform and place on a serving plate that's wider than the pie by a couple of inches, then arrange in concentric circles chopped parsley, chopped hard-cooked eggs, and chopped red onion. Top the whole pie with as much caviar as you can pile on there, then dot with capers & serve with crackers. My mother, brother, and I can demolish a whole one of these made with 16 oz. of cream cheese! I never get tired of it.

[Hiroyuki]

If you want to pickle it in soy sauce, here is a recipe:

http://www.nsknet.or.jp/~tomi-yasu/recipe/107_e.html

So, pleeeease don't eat it tonight! It should keep for a couple of days.

[SuzySushi]

Great ideas! Thanks!

Yes, it is the salted ikura (not fresh roe still in its sac).

Kris, that pizza looks fabulous! At what point do you add the ikura? (I would imagine at the very end, so the eggs aren't cooked.)

Hmmnnn.... now which to choose!

[sanrensho]

I would go for a Japanese-Italian theme. Pasta tossed with ikura and perhaps shiso, and the ikura-topped pizza. You could also make a simple matchstick or wakame salad sprinkled with ikura.

Of course, my first choice would be an ikura-don, with the ikura completely obscuring the rice underneath.

[SuzySushi]

Hmmm.... I'm getting an idea here. How about if I combined Japanese, Italian, and Russian themes by using pasta made of buckwheat flour -- i.e., soba? I don't have any shiso available (the market was out of it yesterday), but I could certainly add slivers of nori.

[helenjp]

Not forgetting that it freezes pretty well...

[SuzySushi]

Well, after all that build-up, a real let-down.

Came dinnertime, I was engrossed in other things... such as work, restoring my husband's computer from a crash, and my daughter's possible concussion (she got hit in the head by a tree limb)... so took the easy way out by making tried & true soba and topping it with the ikura and slivered nori. Served with fresh asparagus.

It looked colorful and gorgeous (sorry, no pictures), but the flavors, well, didn't meld. There was no "aHA" moment.

Next time I'll go for the gold with an ikura donburi, blini, potato pancakes (not enough potatoes in the house today), or even try the pizza.

Thanks for all the great ideas, though, guys!

[prasantrin]

I'm late, as usual, but I once had a kinkan stuffed with ikura at a kaiseki place. The kinkan was hollowed out so just the rind remained. It was meant to be eaten in one bite, and it was delicious! If you ever have too much ikura again, and can get kinkan, too, I would highly recommend it!

[SuzySushi]

I'm late, as usual, but I once had a kinkan stuffed with ikura at a kaiseki place.  The kinkan was hollowed out so just the rind remained.  It was meant to be eaten in one bite, and it was delicious!  If you ever have too much ikura again, and can get kinkan, too, I would highly recommend it!

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I've never even seen kinkan and had to Google for a picture. Got to keep a lookout in the greenmarkets and Chinatown... Do they have a season?

[sanrensho]

It looked colorful and gorgeous (sorry, no pictures), but the flavors, well, didn't meld. There was no "aHA" moment.

Was it the actual flavors, or perhaps the texture? I can see how the coldness and chewiness of soba noodles might not work well with the ikura. Since ikura aren't that far off from runny egg yolks, I can see how a warm bed of rice or warm pasta would work better.

Edited June 2, 2006 by sanrensho (log)

[prasantrin]

I've never even seen kinkan and had to Google for a picture. Got to keep a lookout in the greenmarkets and Chinatown... Do they have a season?

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In Japan I think it's a fall/winter fruit. I think kinkan is just a type of kumquat, so you use whatever kumquats you can get.

[Kent Wang]

I think the pizza is the best idea here. The problem with tossing with pasta, salad, etc is that the ikura will just end up in a big pile on the bottom. With the pizza, they're evenly distributed and will stay that way.

[Jason Perlow]

Blinis, with creme fraische on top and the Ikura. Use it as you would Caviar.

[SuzySushi]

Was it the actual flavors, or perhaps the texture? I can see how the coldness and chewiness of soba noodles might not work well with the ikura. Since ikura aren't that far off from runny egg yolks, I can see how a warm bed of rice or warm pasta would work better.

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Both flavors and texture! The ikura tasted like ikura, and the soba tasted like soba. The ikura didn't stay on the soba very well when picking them up with chopsticks, so what I ended up putting in my mouth was mostly cold soba with a few ikura eggs, then a bite of the ikura separately. Warm rice is far stickier than cold soba!