Very simple but refreshing salad that takes no time to make. Salty and sour pickled plum adds a unique flavour to the dressing which goes so well with Daikon Salad. Combined with soy sauce, the dressing has a typical Japanese touch.
This is one of the salads I had at an Izakaya (Japanese Style Tavern) during my last trip. The original salad had daikon and mizuna but I used spinach instead of mizuna. As described in my post, Lotus Root and Mizuna Salad, mizuna is a winter vegetable and it is hard to get in Sydney at the moment. So, I used baby spinach instead and it turned out to be equally delicious. I think that spinach and pickled plum go well together.
If mizuna is available where you live (people in the northern hemisphere!), please try it with this salad. I also used fine endive leaves which were sold as ‘Finesse’ at a vegetable shop, the other day. It turned out good, too.
Japanese people love daikon (white radish). Julienned daikon is included in salad quite often. When you go to the basements of department stores where prepared foods are sold, a couple of daikon-based salads are always on display.
I talked about daikon in my recipe Rice with White Radish (Daikon Takikomi Gohan) in quite a bit of detail, including using different parts of daikon. So, I am not going to explain about daikon today. If you have a choice, use the top part of daikon (closer to the leaves) for daikon salad.
I cut daikon into matchsticks today but you could slice it into different shapes such as pie shape or into ribbons if you like.
About Umeboshi (Pickled Plum)
The hero of today’s dish is umeboshi. Everyone knows umeboshi in Japan because it used to be one of the ‘must have’ ingredients when making rice balls. It is salty and sour, so you can eat a lot of rice with just one small umeboshi – not much nutrition but low cost food to fill up your stomach.
Umeboshi is often served in the Japanese style breakfast, particularly at Ryokan (Japanese style accommodation). When I finish eating all the other dishes and if I still have some rice left, I can eat the rice with umeboshi.
Umeboshi is made by pickling plums in salt, then semi-drying them. That’s where the name ‘umeboshi’ (梅干) came from. Ume (梅) is plum, boshi (干) came from the verb ‘hosu’ (干す) meaning dry. Although we call it plum, umeboshi plum is a different species from the plum you eat as a fruit. It is more like apricot.
The colour of umeboshi is brown or red. The natural colour of umeboshi is brown and depending on the way the plums are pickled, the shade of brown ranges from whitish brown to very dark brown. The red colour comes from purple coloured perilla (red shiso), which is marinated with plums. The colour from the perilla comes out and stains the plums red.
There are different sizes, textures and flavours of umeboshi available but for today’s recipe, I used a standard large umeboshi with natural colour. To make umeboshi dressing, you will need soft flesh that can be mixed and the flavour extracted. Soft-flesh umeboshi like this is the best.
From top right clockwise: small crunch umeboshi with sweet flavouring, standard umeboshi, red umeboshi with red shiso.
You can buy umeboshi at Japanese and some Asian grocery stores. The smallest pack I can find in Sydney contains about 6 plums and you only need 1 umeboshi for 2 servings in this recipe. But don’t worry, umeboshi keeps for very long time. The normal umeboshi that is marinated only with salt keeps years in the fridge.
But if umeboshi contains other ingredients such as honey or bonito flakes, you should consume it within 6 months.
Umeboshi is also one of the popular rice ball fillings. You can find the sample of rice balls with umeboshi in Onigiri (Japanese Rice Ball) if you are interested in rice balls.
Today’s salad is so simple to make that I don’t have to say much about it. So, I used up a large space for explaining umeboshi. But let me talk about the plum dressing.
Wafū Dressing
When vinaigrette-type salad dressing contains soy sauce, they call the dressing collectively ‘wafū dressing’ (和風ドレッシング, Japanese-style dressing). I spelt it ‘wafū dressing’ but Japanese people pronounce it ‘wafū doresshing’ as there is no short ‘d’ and ‘s’ sounds in Japanese.
The basic wafū dressing consists of oil, rice vinegar and soy sauce. You can then add shredded perilla to make shiso (perilla) dressing, add wasabi to make wasabi dressing, add yuzu (Japanese citrus) to make yuzu dressing, etc. And today’s dressing is called ‘ume dressing’ (梅ドレッシング, plum dressing) in Japan.
Unlike the Western-style salad dressing, plum dressing contains a small amount of oil (only 1 tablespoon for 2 servings!). It also contains dashi stock, which makes it really ‘wafū’ (和風).
Incidentally, when sesame oil is added to wafū dressing, the dressing becomes ‘chūkafū dressing‘ (中華風ドレッシング) meaning Chinese-style dressing.
It is such a simple salad with only daikon and baby spinach but bonito flakes and roasted seaweed pieces as topping add another dimension to the texture and flavour of this daikon salad. It also matches perfectly with the dashi based dressing.
Yumiko
Very simple but refreshing salad that takes no time to make. Salty and sour pickled plum adds a unique flavour to the dressing which goes so well with Daikon Salad. Combined with soy sauce, the dressing has a typical Japanese touch.
- 200g (7oz) diakon (about 2 x 4cm (1½") thick discs, note 1)
- 60-80g (2.1-2.8oz) baby spinach or mizuna
- 1 umeboshi (note 3), seed removed, cut into very small pieces
- 2 tbsp dashi stock (note 3)
- 1 tbsp rice vinegar
- 1 tbsp salad oil
- ½ tsp soy sauce
- ½ tsp sugar
- 1 cup bonito flakes (note 3)
- ¼ sheet roasted seaweed , finely julienned into about 3cm (1¾") long pieces (optional)
-
Put all the Dressing ingredients in a jar with a lid and shake well (or in a bowl and mix very well). It is OK to have chunks of umeboshi left in the dressing.
-
Place a daikon disk on a cutting board, circle face down. Slice 2mm (1/16") thick, then cut the slices same direction into 2mm matchsticks. Leave the daikon sticks in a bowl filled with chilled water (not in ingredients) for 5 minutes to make them crisp. Drain.
-
Spread baby spinach on a cutting board and cut them 3-4 times at equal intervals. This will make the size of spinach smaller. If using mizuna, cut them into 4cm (1½") long.
-
Mix daikon and spinach in a bowl. Then, transfer the salad onto a serving plate.
-
Top with bonito flakes and roasted seaweed if using. Pour the plum dressing over the salad and serve, or serve the salad with the dressing on the side.
1. My daikon was about 6-7cm in diameter. The length of the matchstick (i.e. thickness of the disc) does not have to be exactly 4cm (1½"). I sometimes cut them 3 cm (1¾").
2. Umeboshi is Japanese plum pickled in salt and semi-dried. Please see my post for more details and photos.
3. For a vegetarian version, use konbu-dashi. You can find how to make konbu-dashi in Varieties of Dashi Stock. Omit bonito flakes or substitute with fried onion.
Delicious and refreshing! I added slivered shiso on top. I used homemade umeboshi, too! Thank you for posting the recipe!zax
Hi Susan, addition of shiso was a good decision!