Marinated salmon sashimi salad

Even though I said in an earlier post that I’m without doubt a meat over seafood kind of person, one type of seafood gets me every single time and that is sashimi (raw seafood slices). For some reason, I find raw seafood a lot nicer to eat (in fact I totally love it to bits) than cooked seafood (not that I don’t like cooked seafood of course). It’s that refreshing taste and texture that I find so irresistible. I know for a lot of people this might not be comprehensible.

Even though I say that now, the first time I had sashimi I definitely wasn’t the biggest fan. It was back in early high school days when my mother decided to buy a piece of salmon to celebrate a happy occasion. We were not the wealthiest of families so such eating styles was quite unknown to me.

“What is this?” I asked her curiously. “Did you forget to cook it?”

“No, that’s how you’re meant to eat it dear” she replied with such patience. Without a second thought, I swooshed the fish around in the sauce bowl and put it in my mouth. As it turned out, I had dipped WAY too much wasabi than I could handle and for a first time, well, you can imagine what was going through my mind. I felt tears swelling up behind my closed eyelids and my nose was in a whole world of pain. I was so absorbed in getting rid of that horrid feeling that I swallowed the fish without even attempting to taste it.

It wasn’t until quite some time later that I decided to give sashimi another go and fortunately after that time, it was love at second taste.

Sashimi can include a huge variety of seafoods, such as the most common salmon, tuna and kingfish but also many other types like snapper, dory, mackerel, scallops, lobster, sweet prawns and many others. When people think of sashimi, no doubt they will think of soy sauce and wasabi. We have made a different variety today consisting of raw salmon, cucumber and various condiments to give the fresh and succulent salmon a different and delicious flavour.

If you haven’t yet tried sashimi, I recommend you to as there’s always a first time for everything. 🙂

Marinated salmon sashimi salad
Serves 2
Time to prepare: 10 minutes
Time to make: 5 minutes

Ingredients

• 150g salmon fillet
• 100g cucumber
• 1 tbsp miso
• 1 tbsp mirin
• 1 tbsp light soy sauce
• 1 spring onion
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 1/2 tsp Shichimi*
• 1/4 tsp sesame seeds, roasted
• 1 wedge lemon

Instructions

1. Slice salmon into 1cm strips. Thinly slice spring onion. Julienne cucumber.

2. Combine miso, mirin (Japanese sweet rice wine), light soy sauce, lemon juice and sesame oil. Mix until smooth with no lumps.

3. Place salmon, cucumber and spring onions in a bowl. Pour on dressing and mix evenly.

4. Sprinkle with shichimi* and sesame seeds and serve.

*Shichimi is a Japanese condiment made with 7 different ingredients including but not limited to black and white sesame seeds, ground chilli flakes, roasted nori (dried seaweed), ground Sichuan peppers, ground ginger, hemp seeds and roasted orange peel – Wikipedia.

Serve this dish with a bowl of rice or as a side to a meal.

Question time: Have you tried sashimi before and if so, do you like it?