Skip to main content

Japanese Vegetables with Miso and Sesame Dressing

Japanese Vegetable Market, Kyoto. Photo by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Japanese Vegetables with Miso and Sesame Dressing

Ingredients:
For the dressing:
2 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds
1 tablespoon miso paste
A little dashi (vegetable or kombu seaweed stock).

For the vegetables:
1) Choose one vegetable among the ‘white Group’: Potato, Daikon (available in Asian stores), cauliflower…
2) One vegetable among the ‘orange/yellow group’: Carrot, pumpkin, kumara…
3) One vegetable among the ‘green group’: Broccoli, spinach, snow peas, asparagus…
4) Cherry tomatoes to decorate.

To make the dressing grind the toasted sesame seeds with mortar and pestle, then add the miso paste and mix. Slowly add enough dashi (stock, hot or cold) to make a smooth and runny paste. Set aside.

Choose your vegetables, one from each colour group (considering that Japanese food must also be beautiful to look at), and cut into pretty slices. Boil the potatoes, kumara and daikon, but just steam or blanch all other vegetables, as they still need to be crunchy and colourful. Arrange the vegetables in individual bowls as nicely as you can (for example, one small potato, two carrot slices, and 3 snow peas) and drizzle over the dressing. Decorate with a cherry tomato and serve, cold or lukewarm.

Suggestions
It is important to boil or steam the vegetables separately, or they will all taste the same. The leftover dressing can be stored in the fridge for a few days. Make this salad into a main by adding a square of Japanese soft tofu (the type that can be eaten row).
Labels:

Comments

  1. JoJanuary 1, 2010 at 10:04 AM

    Yum! I love Japanese food!

    ReplyDelete
  2. muppyFebruary 21, 2011 at 2:31 PM

    This sounds like a great idea, healthy and yum!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Mirah@ Asian Cooking Classes AucklandSeptember 6, 2014 at 4:19 PM

    Your post regarding "Japanese Vegetables with Miso and Sesame Dressing" is really amazing healthy. I have also learned how to cook some Japanese dishes from Sachie's Kitchen where I have learned many Asian cookings.

    Looking for some more posts regarding more delicious items from you.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Elvis@ Team Building AucklandMarch 18, 2015 at 1:53 AM

    It's been so long I have read your blog for my interest in cooking. Your recipe is worth of learning! I tried this. It works well.

    Kind Regards
    Elvis Donald

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to make Rose Turkish Delights (Lokum), and Sweet New Zealand

Rose Turkish Delights (Lokum) Before I start I would like to say that I don't have a sugar thermometer, essential if you are really into confectionery, and that I didn't use much sugar for these Turkish delights. Many recipes use much more sugar, and it is not that I wanted to make a low sugar treat here (it is still pretty sweet), it is just that making it at home really makes me realize how much sugar there is already in my diet, and if I can have something with a little less... well, why not! This method is 'home friendly' i.e. these can be made at home with very little effort and equipment, and the recipe comes from my book  Sweet As...  where I also have the recipe for lavender and orange blossom Turkish Delights. Ingredients 1 l water 300 g sugar 2 tbsp lemon juice 100 g cornflour 1 tbsp frozen raspberries 1 tbsp rose water icing sugar (very little) and cornflour (lots) to dust. In a pot put hal
9 comments
Read more

Home Made Marzipan Sweets

This is another recipe from my book Sweet As , and something that I love to make for Xmas. I would like to say that for marzipan you should get the best almonds around, natural, but here in New Zealand the almonds taste different from the ones in Italy. They are imported, not sure where from most of the time, but they are not top grade almonds. Still, with a few tips, you can make your marzipan taste great even with 'regular' almonds! Buy them natural, not blanched, you need to blanche then yourself or the result will be too dry. To blanch them you need to put them in boiling water for a couple of minutes, and then add cold water and take the skin off, one by one. For this recipe you will need: 200 g almonds 100 g icing sugar 5 apricot kernels. As I was saying before, the almond here have little taste, so I like to collect the stones from apricot and get the almonds out. They are a real pain to crack! In the photo above you can see apricot stones and kernels. The apricot kernel
13 comments
Read more

Silver beet Paneer, a variation of Palak Paneer

The other day I showed you my curry made with borage , ‘invented’ because I have tons of it in the garden! The other green-leaf crop that does well in Auckland is silver beet. My old plants (from last year!) got so tall that I started collecting only the little leaves from the stalks, and they look like spinach. One of my favourite Indian dishes is Palak Paneer (or Panir), spinach with panir cottage cheese, and this variation is made using my silver beet. I washed (many times!) the small silver beet leaves, and then I steamed them and drain them. In a heavy pot I heated 2 tbsp of vegetable oil (I used rice bran oil) and sautéed for 30 seconds: 1/2 tsp ground cumin 1/2 tsp ground coriander 1 tsp turmeric 1/3 tsp ground chili then I added 2 roughly chopped shallots and, after 3 minutes, a good pinch of salt and the cooked silver beet. I cooked everything on low for about 20 minutes (you may need to add just a little water if the silver beet is too dry) and then finely pureed the content
5 comments
Read more