mulberryshoots

A few days ago, I bought a fat slice of fresh salmon, sprinkled it with sea salt, sugar and laid two slices together with fresh dill, topped with a can of beans for weight and wrapped it in plastic wrap to cure for a couple of days in the fridge. We enjoyed the gravlax two days ago, sliced thinly on top of a fresh romaine, cherry tomato, red onion salad with tons of capers and slices of fresh lemon.

Tonight, we’ll have the remaining cured salmon as sashimi which we’ll eat with soy and wasabi- and to go along with it, I made an asian noodle salad. Here’s the recipe which I adapted in the following ways:

1. Cooked angel hair pasta, drained and cooled.
2. Sliced: inner leaves of napa cabbage, 2 carrots, a third of an english cucumber, 4 cherry tomatoes, 2 handfuls of red cabbage.
3. Garnished with grated fresh peeled ginger root; chopped scallions and fresh cilantro leaves
4. Dressing: Ohsawa soy sauce, oyster sauce, Marukan seasoned gourmet rice vinegar, sesame oil, olive oil, red pepper flakes (pinch); sweetener (sugar-free) – whisked it together and set aside.
5. Spooned dressing onto warm pasta and mixed well – added a little more to flavor the noodles before adding to the vegetables.
6. Spooned dressing onto the greens so that they were just coated but not flooded with dressing.
7. Added the dressed noodles and tossed to combine – tasted for seasoning; covered top of bowl with plastic wrap and put into the fridge until dinner.

This asian noodle salad will round out our salmon (gravlax) sashimi leftovers tonight!

What a lovely, sunny and peaceful day it’s been! And I was thinking that soon, it’ll be time to fire up the Japanese hibachi we have on the back deck – and that variations of this asian noodle salad might go well during the warm weather with grilled teriyaki chicken thighs, shrimp scampi and just about anything asian grilled.