Cabbage and Shimeji Mushrooms Ohitashi Salad is an elegant dish served in a lightly flavoured broth, that is made with dashi stock, mirin, and soy sauce. It keeps 2-3 days in the fridge.
If you are a vegetarian, use vegetarian dashi stock such as konbu dash.
Don't forget to see the section 'MEAL IDEAS' below the recipe card! It gives you a list of dishes that I have already posted and this recipe that can make up a complete meal. I hope it is of help to you.
- 100g/3.5oz shimeji mushrooms (note 1)
- 200g/7.1oz cabbage
- 5g/0.2oz salt (=1¼ tsp, note 2)
- 250ml/8.5fl oz dashi stock
- 2 tbsp mirin
- 2 tbsp usukuchi shōyu (light soy sauce)
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Put all the broth ingredients into a pot and bring it to a boil. Let it cool.
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Remove or trim thick vein from the core-end of the cabbage leaves. Cut each leaf into 4cm wide strips, then cut them into 3-4cm/1⅛-1½" wide pieces perpendicular to the first cut. You can cut them slightly diagonally as well.
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Trim off the base of the cluster of the shimeji mushrooms and separate each mushroom stem. If mushrooms are tiny, keep a couple of mushrooms together.
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Blanch mushrooms in a boiling water for 1 minute. Drain through a sieve.
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Put 500ml/1.1pt of water and salt (in the ingredients list) in the used pot and bring it to a boil.
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Put cabbage pieces into the pot and blanch for 30-60 seconds (note 3).
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Transfer the cabbage pieces to ice water in a large bowl to quickly cool them down.
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Take a handful of the cabbage pieces at a time, squeeze water out of the cabbage and put them in an airtight container (note 4).
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Put the mushrooms into the container and pour the broth over them.
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Seal the surface of the Ohitashi Salad with a piece of cling wrap with no air bubbles underneath the cling wrap. Place the lid on and leave for at least 1 hour to let the vegetables soak up the flavours.
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Serve the vegetables with some broth in a serving bowl.
1. Instead of shimeji mushrooms, you can use shiitake mushrooms (sliced), enoki mushroom, pearl mushrooms, or oyster mushrooms as an alternative.
2. I used 5g/0.2oz salt for 500ml/1.1p of water to boil cabbage. To add the right amount of salty flavour to the cabbage, the boiling water needs to contain 1% salt.
3. Time to blanch depends on the thickness of the cabbage leaves. If you are using a soft spring cabbage or savoy cabbage, it will require only 30 seconds. The normal green cabbage will require longer.
4. If you are serving the dish immediately after 1 hour of soaking, put the vegetables into the broth in a pot, instead of using a new container.
5. Cabbage and Shimeji Mushrooms Ohitashi Salad keeps 2-3 days in the fridge.
6. Nutrition per serving. It is assumed that 1% of the salt is absorbed into the cabbage when blanched, and 20% of the broth is consumed.
serving: 189g calories: 52kcal fat: 0.5g (1%) saturated fat: 0.1g (1%) trans fat: 0.0g polyunsaturated fat: 0.2g monounsaturated fat: 0.1g cholesterol: 0.3mg (0%) sodium: 438mg (19%) carbohydrates: 9.4g (3%) dietary fibre: 3g (11%) sugar: 5.8g protein: 3.9g vitamin D: 0mcg (1%) calcium: 44mg (3%) iron: 0.8mg (4%) potassium: 392mg (8%)