Kyonpe's Corner
"The Sakura family's radish salad"
Kyonpe
November 19, 2001
Though I had intended to fix my usual salad with radish and scallops, following my whim it somehow turned out to be something quite new. By dressing thin stripes of radish with sauce that is made from mixing cod roes and mayonnaise with a little bit of soy sauce, I came up with a salad the color of cherry blossoms.
My husband and children don't care much for my usual radish-and-scallops salad, but they loved this one and ate away delightedly. It was probably my definition of this culinary concoction as "the salad of Chibi Maruko-chan" which might have attracted them. Moreover, they also greatly enjoyed a bite-size canapˇ I made by spreading this paste on thinly sliced bread and baking it in a toaster-oven.
As I tried making it
From the fact that it turns out to be pale pink, as you see in the picture, it reminds one of cherry-blossoms (Sakura), Ms. Sakura, and then, consequently, of Chibi Maruko-chan.
Needless to say, Chibi Maruko-chan is the main character in a TV cartoon series that was highly popular at one time, and Ms. Sakura is the creator of the series. Mixing cod roes in the mayonnaise makes the flavor richer, but some might find it a bit too "fishy"!
For such cases, I would suggest adding citron, or you could also try substituting cod roes pickled in mustard for the regular ones in order to add dash to the flavor.
Add a bit of salt and wring the strips of radish dry before dressing them with the sauce, Be sure to eat the salad freshly prepared, and here's why--because more than 90 percent of radish content is water, it's no wonder that it becomes so watery only within few minutes, like when I was taking the photograph.
Plate: by Junsaku Iwai
From Shiki no Aji (January 1995)
Translated by Maiko Noda
|
