I struggle to get my 3-year-old son to eat at every meal.  I’m not exaggerating, the kid loses interest in just about every food he eats after the first bite. Even when he was breastfeeding he would feed for about 2 minutes and lose interest.  As a toddler he would only eat pureed fruits, and spit out the pureed vegetables and meats.  It wasn’t until he was almost 2 years old that we discovered that he was a foodie!  His first favorite non-fruit food was Brie cheese.  Brie?!?  What toddler decides they like Brie??  Seriously, the kid refused to eat mozzarella, cheddar, american cheese, string cheese, all staples of a normal toddler’s diet.  But give him a wheel of Brie, and he will go to town.

If Brie was my son’s first love, then Ikura, or salmon roe, is his first serious relationship.  He lovingly calls them “Nemo eggs” in reference to the scene in the beginning of “Finding Nemo” when Nemo’s parents were looking at a cave of fish eggs before the barracuda attacked and ate all but one egg.  My son will even reenact the scene where Marlon lovingly turns an egg over in his fins and names the to-be-hatched egg “Nemo”, while he inhales the Ikura like the barracuda. Kinda messed up, I know, but lets not psychoanalyze this, the important thing is that he actually eats a whole lot of this stuff, and mommy is happy!

When we lived in LA I use to get them from Mitsuwa (a national Japanese grocery chain).  Now that I live in Maryland, I find them in H-Mart (local Korean grocery chain).  They are a little pricey – 3-4oz of Ikura will run you about $10 currently – but they are packed full of fish oil and omega-3s so I justify the price with its health benefits.  The taste and texture is divine – the clear casing pops when you squeeze them with your tongue, releasing the smooth savory oils and protein inside the egg.

A common misconception of Ikura is that it is raw and directly from a fish.  It isn’t raw,  well, not technically.  When harvested from a salmon, the eggs are actually a dark solid red, and very clumpy.  The eggs have to be separated individually, run through a series of brines and hot water baths before they become orange and translucent.  Here is a great 2-part video I found as to how to process the ikura property before it can be eaten – Part 1 and Part 2

Mini “Nemo Egg” rolls

Serving size: snack size or toddler meal size –  6 small rolls

Prep time:  10 minutes

1 cup of cooked rice

6 sheets of dried seaweed – I use Costco’s Kirkland Roasted Seaweed , but any kind will do, my kids love this stuff on their own too!

2 tablespoons of pork sung – you can pick this up when you go and get the Ikura, it is a very common southeast Asian dried pork product

Ikura (aka salmon roe) – to taste

Instructions:

Lay one sheet of seaweed flat;  Spread a thin layer of rice across the entire sheet of seaweed with a rice scooper or a large flat spoon;  Pick up the seaweed in your palm,  and roll the two short ends of the seaweed upwards to make a U-shaped log;  Squeeze the rice together gently and flatten on top to create a flat surface for the pork sung and Ikura;  Using your free hand, take a small clump of pork sung and sprinkle on top of the rice;  Using a small teaspoon, scoop your desired amount of Ikura on top of the pork sung; Repeat.  Serve.