Cucumber Salad with Sesame Japanese Style

By pattie_d

Ingredients

• 2 long English-style cucumbers
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons rice vinegar or white wine vinegar
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• a pinch dashi stock granules (optional)
• 2 teaspoons sugar (or equivalent sweetener of your choice)
• 1 teaspoon sesame oil
• 3 to 4 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds
• a pinch salt (optional, to taste)

Details

Servings 2
Preparation time 10mins
Cooking time 10mins
Adapted from justhungry.com

Preparation

Step 1

Tip: the longer you let it rest before serving, the saltier the cucumber will get, so if you want to serve it as a salad you'd want to combine the cucumber with the dressing just before serving. On the other hand, if you let it marinate in the refrigerator the cucumber becomes assertive enough to eat with plain rice as part of a Japanese meal.

Directions:

Mix the lemon juice, vinegar, soy sauce, dashi stock granules and sugar together until the sugar has dissolved. Taste, and add a pinch of salt if you think it needs it. Add the sesame oil (or you can just drizzle on the sesame oil when you assemble the salad).

Combine the cucumbers with the dressing and the sesame seeds. Serve right away or leave to marinate in the refrigerator for a stronger flavor.

Add some shredded

This sesame dressing is very versatile. Try it with any number of vegetables. It’s great on a leafy green salad. You can increase the sesame oil if you want it to have a richer sesame flavor. Add some chili pepper flakes to make it spicy, and/or some grated garlic for a more Korean-tasting twist.

book from a heath food store. It's traditional (and modern) recipes and cooking methods, but adapted to be vegan.

Slightly different sauce, 1/3 cup rice vinegar instead of the vinegar/lemon mix, no seeds, add 1 tbsp of veg oil, no dashi.

This was fantastic, and gone in about 5 seconds. I froze the dashi broth you taught us to make a little while back, into ice-cube trays. I used two of those cubes - do you think that's a good equivalent for the granules?

There is no Dashi available here (Athens, Greece); What can we add instead for more flavour?

I'm planning to marinate it so I'm going to try adding a small square of konbu instead of dashi granules ... but I don't know if you can get that in Athens either!

Can I avoid adding the rice wine? Thanks.

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