Wafu Salad: Japanese-Style Salad with Wakame and Cucumber
Japanese cooking, and Japanese culture as a whole, deserve attention; they're truly special. They have great respect for detail: they don't just combine flavours well, but colours too — in a salad, for example. They look after, I'd even say pamper, their ingredients like no one else; they look for pure flavours and combine them to reach glory. Every ingredient has its role, and they seek clean flavours. They work a lot with light foods, little fat, little sugar and quick cooking, to keep the “life” in the vegetables.
Watching them cook is wonderful: the way they move the utensils and their hands is like a dance; they seek concentration and perfection in every task.
The course worked like this: we arrived at the home of Toshiko, our Teacher (with a capital T), at 20:00, cooked 3 or 4 dishes until around 22:00, and then ate everything we had cooked over a wonderful conversation — a real luxury.
Besides cooking several dishes, I learned things about Japanese culture, such as the meaning of some words. For example, itamae, the sushi chef, means “the one in front of the board”. When we see wafu salad on a menu, it means Japanese-style salad; on the other hand, yofu means something Western-style. She even drew the names of dishes for us, to help us understand the nuances.
The salad in question is the Wafu salad
Ingredients
- 1 cucumber, very thinly sliced and left to stand with salt so it releases its water
- 40 g wakame, which is a seaweed
- 4 cabbage leaves, blanched, cooled and finely shredded
- White radish (daikon).
For the dressing
- 2 tablespoons soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon rice vinegar
- 1 tablespoon sesame oil
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- A little white pepper
- A little olive oil
- A little fresh ginger, cut into fine julienne
- A few sesame seeds
If you want to know more, you'll have to take the course — I don't explain it as well as Toshiko.
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