Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Wakame and Kanikama Salad with Onion Dressing


Wakame Seaweed, Crab Stick and Daikon Radish Salad with Onion Dressing

I have heard that kanikama (crab stick?) is known and used even outside Japan and often called "surimi" in some of European countries, right? I love it in salad or rolled sushi, though I was not too crazy about its artificial red color. (This crab stick in the above photo was colored with lycopene. At least, that's what the package says.)

Anyways, I bought some newly harvested onions last weekend to try this onion dressing recipe (Japanese) I had found on the net recently. It sounds like using newly harvested onions makes a big difference for this recipe, so I bought four of them. Actually I didn't need that many, but it was four-in-one bag deal, so no other choice.

This dressing is so good but a little too sweet for me. Next time I'm going to use less sugar. When using as-is, I love it so much with tomatoes, cucumbers and daikon radish. It's very good with seafood/fish-cake products, too, like in the photo above, but I wasn't too impressed when used it with kaibashira (eye of scallop?) and corn.

Also, according to many "reports" from the readers of that site, this seems to be a versatile dressing. It must be handy to keep this in the fridge in a big plastic bottle so that I can add different flavors when I use it for different types of salad. I'm looking forward to playing with different ideas. Maybe herbs or sesame paste, soy sauce... even mustard or wasabi?... ;)


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13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yup it is surimi.... no idea why they call it that, plus it doesn't really taste like crab in my country. :p But I've had surimi that was good.... Anyway that salad looks really good anyway. :)

Great Stone Face said...

I also enjoy surimi, but my father has an allergic reaction to the red dye in it. It makes his lips swell.

Anonymous said...

Obachan,
Sounds very refreshing! might try the recipe myself for the summer. Kanikama is very popular here in Canada too. My mother makes cucumber and kanikama salad with mayo. Try it!

Anonymous said...

yum yum!! Looks amzing and fresh as always Obachan! It's been while since I left comments but i been reading you blog:)
Is there a way I can have that onion dressing recipe in English? i would love to try. There is a little farmers' market in my neibourhood and they are selling rubard, chard, and edible flowers and i bet they have tiny onions too!!

Anonymous said...

I want to try that dressing with the wakame and fresh stone crab. Yummy.

Anonymous said...

Your salad looks cery good! I must try to understand the directions, my Japanese is still, hm, on the very beginner stage, but it's a good exercise, isn't it?
And you're right, crab sticks are at least here in Finland called surimi.

Anonymous said...

We have surimi here in California, but it's usually called krab meat (note the k instead of a c). At least, I think it is surimi.. Either way, I am told it tastes almost exactly like the real thing, and is a lot cheaper as well.

ghanima said...

Sometimes the sushi places I go to refer to this as "crab stick", but I most often see it called "surimi". That's how it's packaged in Canada.

Anonymous said...

I second the plea to have the onion dressing recipe in English. Perhaps the Obachan version? Your blog is definitely my favorite! Very beautiful and inspiring.

obachan said...

Mako
Surimi means fish paste, and the crab stick is made from fish paste, so the name is not totally wrong, but the use of the word sounds kinda funny to Japanese.

Great stone face
Really? So I guess some brands still use old-fashioned artificial color… I guess (hope) lycopene is better than that.

Cocogirl
Oh, that’s my favorite, too. Kanikama-cucumber-mayo salad! It’s so darn popular here.

Ireney
Thanks for reading my blog.
About the dressing recipe -- Email me. :) If clicking on the ‘email me’ link on the sidebar does not work, right-click on it and copy+paste my email address to use it. TKS.

Stephen
AHHHHHH, it’ll be great with stone crab. I really think the dressing is good for marinating seafood with some herbs of your choice.

Maud
Enjoy your exercise, and if you have questions, don’t hesitate to email me. :)

Sirpaul
I like it that they use k instead of c to make a distinction. It is true that it’s a lot cheaper, but ours does not taste like the real crab at all, so be warned. ;)

Ghanima
Sounds like the artificial, fake crab meat product is all over the world, isn’t it? BTW, it’s also nice as tempura.

Anonymous commenter
Thank you for your compliment. Please email me about the recipe.

Anonymous said...

Oh, so that's how it it.... unfortunately the one I use last time didn't really even taste like fish.... seemed without taste. Thanks for informing me. ^^

Unknown said...

Thank you very much for your blogs.
This is my first post to a blog and I hope it follows the rules.
I found you while looking for Furofuki Daikon. It will take me some time to go through all your blogs!

I do not read any Japanese characters(yet).

I have found a way to get translations using Google search.

In your reference to the original Onion Dressing Japanese web site, it links to cookpad.com in Japanese. I took what looked like the title next to the picture and used that as a Google search term. Google found the page, and I chose to use the automatically translated page. This lead to:
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&u=http://cookpad.com/mykitchen/recipe/detail.cfm%3Fcpage%3D3%26climit%3D10%26TR_PAGE%3D1%26DISPLAY%3Dnormal%26AR_LIMIT%3D3%26RID%3D281624%26AR_PAGE%3D1%26LIMIT%3D0%26TR_LIMIT%3D9&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=1&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3D%25E3%2583%2597%25E3%2583%25AD%25E3%2581%25AE%25E5%2591%25B3%25EF%25BC%2581%25E7%25BE%258E%25E5%2591%25B3%25E3%2581%2597%25E3%2581%2599%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dopera%26rls%3Den%26hs%3DRwK

These translations MUST used carefully. For example, the translation took what I believe to be 1.5 kilograms and incorrectly translated as 1.5 kilometers. The rest of the ingredient list looked OK.

obachan said...

Mako
Ours have this slight sweetness but no strong taste at all. Maybe that's why it can go well with almost any kind of salad dressing.

Don
Thank you very much for sharing how to translate the post into English. Personally I love trying those online translation sites when I feel down and need a good laugh.

Another way to do it is going directly to the Japanese recipe site linked in my post, copy-pasting its URL to the "translate a web page" slot on the Google language tool site here.

Actually, I usually respond to those who emal me and ask for English translations of the recipes, but yeah, I have to admit that my translation is not as amusing/creative as google or babelfish.
LOL