I dreamed up this salad combination a few months ago when I was asked to create an Instagram ad for Kaneiwa Company, a Japanese maker of high quality seaweed products. Now, there are many ways you can use Japanese seaweed, the obvious applications being soup and sushi recipes. But Kaneiwa wanted to showcase their product in something a little less mainstream, so I decided to use two main ingredients that are quintessentially Japanese - tuna and daikon - along with some baby tomatoes and a few leaves of lettuce to create a salad.
For the dressing, I used a combination of ground toasted sesame mixed with some rice vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil and some sugar. The salad would be topped with a generous sprinkling of Kaneiwa's premium "momi-nori" or crushed seaweed. (The seaweed is sprinkled on just before serving so that it doesn't have time to soak up the dressing and become soggy.)
As a salad, this dish is simplicity itself to make - the daikon is prepared raw, it's sliced into matchsticks to make retain the crunch but make it easy to eat. The flaked tuna is simple - it's just out of a can from a sustainable source. You can have this salad ready to be served on your table in 15 minutes from the get-go. It's got a little bit of a lot of good things in it and it's substantial enough to eat as a single course lunch or supper or you can use it as a side salad.
Although this recipe was originally made to showcase a product, my recipe shos you how to make your own shredded nori from a sheet. Of course, if you can source Kaneiwa shredded nori, that's great too!
So, if you want to create a plate of healthy, delicious salad that's a little out of the mainstream, this might just be for you. You can find the Youtube tutorial by clicking Daikon & Tuna Salad with Sesame dressing or by scrolling to the bottom of the page. The written recipe is just below.
Happy salad days! Kurumi XXXX.
ingredients:
3 green lettuce leaves
1 tin of tuna, net100g /3 .5oz (if you're using tuna chunks, you'll need to break the chunks into flakes)
10 baby tomatoes
250g / 9oz daikon/mooli (15cm/6in)
for the sesame dressing:
2 tbsp toasted white sesame seeds
2 tsp sugar
1 tbsp rice vinegar
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp sesame oil
1/2 sheet of nori (or a pack of prepared,seasoned nori such as Kaneiwa Mominori)
how to:
rinse the lettuce leaves and tomatoes and set aside
to make the sesame dressing:
grind the sesame seeds well in a mortar or blender. spoon the ground sesame in a bowl, then add
the sugar, rice vinegar, soy sauce and sesame oil. mix together well
fold the 1/2 nori sheet in half and cut down the fold. fold the two pieces in half again and cut in half once more. then, cut the nori into fine shreds along the short edge to create your own shredded nori
to prepare the salad:
halve the baby tomatoes
peel the skin from daikon and cut it in half. then put each half on its end and cut into thin slices. when finished, arrange the slices in piles and slice again to create diakon matchsticks
put the daikon matchsticks into a bowl. add the drained tuna and halved baby tomatoes and stir everything together
arrange the lettuce leaves on a serving plate plate. gently spoon over the daikon mixture.
spoon over the sesame dressing and sprinkle with the shredded nori just before serving
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