One thing I’m hoping to do with this blog from now on is to shift the focus a little towards one of the things I love most in life – food. Since passing edible items through my lips is more than just a survival means for me, I also enjoy the ritual involved in preparing the food. People who know me may have also noticed that an attention to the nutritional value of what goes into the meal has climbed in ranks on the priority list. More on my new found fixation on nutrition to come.
This simple salad is modelled on one of my favourite Japanese dishes – Butashabu. Buta is the word for pig or pork in Japanese and shabu is an abbreviation of shabu shabu. Informative, I know. To elaborate, shabu shabu is the onomatopoeic name for the process of swishing thin slices of meat around in a boiling pot of hot water or stock before dipping it into a sauce of your choice – in the case of pork a sesame based sauce is my top choice. The Japanese love onomatopoeia and quite a few food items have been subjected to this naming process.
Basically, this recipe takes the thinly sliced pork and the sesame sauce portions of the above meal and dumps it on a bed of salad vegetables. Quick, easy, tasty and healthy. If this doesn’t qualify for some sort of Nobel prize for disguised laziness, then I don’t know what would.
Japanese Summer Salad Recipe
Serves 2 hungry, health-conscious people
Prep time – 10 minutes
Prep time – 10 minutes
INGREDIENTS
Salad vegetables – this is really open to interpretation, but I would recommend including one lettuce-like component.
I went for:
2 Carrots – shredded
A handful of baby tomatoes
Half a nostrano cucumber
4 mini radishes
Half an avocado
Half a lettuce
Pork
300-350g of thinly sliced relatively fatty pork – mine was bought at Nishi frozen, I recommend doing the same since it really needs to be thin. Bacon is not an acceptable substitute, in my eyes.
Dressing
3 Tbsp Ponzu (available at most Japanese shops, including Nishi and Yumihana)
A good handful of white sesame seeds – ground
3 Tbsp toasted sesame oil (or to taste)
Salt and pepper
INSTRUCTIONS
1. I won’t insult your intelligence by telling you how to put together a salad, but I will show you my lovely ingredients as they were all (with the exception of the avocado) purchased on a Saturday morning at the Farmers’ Market in Oerlikon. Anyone who knows me in real life will know that the will power required to get me to trek across town on a Saturday morning in the name of groceries warrants an appreciation of these veggies.
And the imposter from COOP…
I personally prefer to shred my carrots as I like their taste but am not the most appreciative person in the world when it comes to their saw-dust like texture.
All heaped together.
2. Cook the pork. I defrosted my frozen pork during the day and simply separated it and placed it into a wok over medium heat. You don’t need any oil as the fat on the pork will suffice. Don’t be tempted to cut off the fat – this is what makes the salad tasty. Japanese people eat plenty of fatty meat and they are far from fat so don’t go chucking it out with the intention of saving yourself some calories. Eating the fat on the pork is what will ensure you stay full. Skip it and you’ll end up reaching for the biscuits later. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!
Normally you would boil the pork for it to qualify as butashabu, but I find that if you fry it you can give it a bit of crisp. Plus, seeing as the quality of the pork is not quite what you get in Japan (where the pork is paper thin and melts in your mouth), frying it is best for avoiding chewiness.
3. In the mean time, make the dressing.
Grind your sesame seeds using a pestle and mortar.
Pour in the ponzu.
Followed by the sesame oil and some salt and pepper to taste.
If you like tanginess in a dressing, adjust the amount of ponzu accordingly. Alternatively you could add a dash of rice vinegar.
Once the pork has cooked through and browned ever so slightly, simply pile it on the salad and pour over the dressing. You can also wait for the pork to cool to really make it the summer dish that it is meant to be.
My recommendation would be to eat this with a chilled beer on a balcony if at all possible. Beer, not wine. Beer.
If you don’t eat pork, I reckon you could probably do this with chicken. If you don’t eat any meat, I would just bulk up on the avocado front or add some rice noodles and enjoy the taste of the dressing. It just happens to go particularly well with pork, but it is, in fact, the star of the show.
En guete!
.jpg)
