Adding Wasabi Mayonnaise to a salad gives it a Japanese touch. Root Vegetable Salad is a very simple salad consisting of only carrot, burdock and cucumber, but it’s quite satisfying with a creamy Wasabi Dressing.
If your carrot is very thick, halve or quarter vertically to make thin sticks. Make sasagaki cut carrot (shaved carrot) from each stick. See the post for how to do sasagaki cut.
Boil water in a small saucepan and blanch the carrot pieces for 30–60 seconds (note 4). Drain and cool.
If you are using frozen shaved burdock, thaw them and drain excess water if necessary. Skip steps 4 and 5.
Slice the cucumber thinly diagonally, then julienne the sliced cucumber slices lengthwise.
Mix wasabi paste, soy sauce, vinegar and mirin in a small bowl, ensuring that there are no lumps of wasabi paste.
Taste test and adjust with salt if required. Serve as a salad, or in small bowls/plates as appetiser.
1. You can buy burdock that are already shaved into sasagaki cut. They are sold frozen at Japanese/Asian grocery stores.
2. If you are using wasabi powder, mix the powder with water to make wasabi paste. The degree of kick of heat and wasabi flavour depends on the brand of wasabi you use. You can increase the amount of wasabi if you prefer it to be spicier.
3. I used Kewpie mayonnaise, which is available at Japanese/Asian grocery stores as well as supermarkets. The Western style mayonnaise and Kewpie mayonnaise are a bit different in flavour – the former is sweeter. I made wasabi mayonnaise using both types of mayonnaise and both of them came out fine.
4. The time to blanch/cook root vegetables depends on the thickness of sasagaki cut and also how crunchy/soft you want them to be.
5. Fresh burdock becomes brown when exposed to air. Soaking in water, it prevents the burdock pieces from becoming brown. It also removes the bitterness.
6. Nutrition information per serving:
serving: 132g calories: 156kcal fat: 12g (17%) saturated fat: 1.7g (9%) polyunsaturated fat: 6.3g monounsaturated fat: 2.5g cholesterol: 5.8mg (2%) sodium: 666mg (27%) potassium: 321mg (10%) carbohydrates: 13.7g (5%) dietary fibre: 4.1g (16%) sugar: 2.7g protein: 1.8g vitamin a: 101% vitamin c: 5.9% calcium: 19.4% iron: 1.8%