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In the second of our recipe series from ex Nobu head chef Scott Hallsworth, we go full circle from the beef fillet tataki with this colourful Japanese “grains and greens” salad recipe from his new book Junk Food Japan.
Grains and greens salad
I almost don’t want to like this salad whilst it’s trendy. The grains stare up at me proudly and say, “Hey, it’s okay man; you’re part of the superfood-dudes club now, you’ve been saved!”
Serve it in a vintage wheelbarrow and you can claim hipster status.
Turn up the music and ignore those pesky grains while I tuck in. Superfood-dude members or not, I feel like a million bucks after knocking off a big bowl of this. This works well with other grains or greens – get experimental! Deck it out with hot-smoked salmon or serve with barbecued scallops; or everybody’s mate, avocado, fits in well too.
SERVES 6 AS A SIDE SALAD, OR 2 AS A MAIN COURSE
Ingredients
- unsalted butter, or olive oil, for frying
- 120g pumpkin or sweet potato, cubed
- 1 garlic clove, crushed
- 80g tenderstem broccoli
- 50g sugar snap peas (or whatever is in season, such as green beans)
- 40g roasted cashews, roughly chopped
- 30g roasted pine nuts, roughly chopped
- 2 or 3 leaves baby gem lettuce
- sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
For the grains
- 60g dried green lentils, rinsed and well drained
- 60g soba grains, rinsed and well drained (or use buckwheat grains if you can’t source soba)
- 60g quinoa
- 3cm piece kombu
For the honey, soy and ginger dressing
- 130ml liquid honey
- 55ml Japanese rice vinegar
- 45g lemon juice
- 20g pickled ginger, finely chopped
- 20g freshly grated ginger
- 6g garlic purée
- 40ml dark soy sauce
Method
- Heat the butter in a large frying pan and roast the cubes of pumpkin with the garlic for 15 minutes over a medium heat.
- Meanwhile, put the lentils and grains in separate pans and cover with cold water. Break the kombu into 3 pieces and add a strip of kombu to each pan. Bring them to the boil and simmer for 20 minutes, until the grains are tender. Drain.
- Dead simple to put together once all your bits and pieces are cooked. For the broccoli and sugar snap peas, trim and blanch for a few seconds in salted, boiling water – the veg should be quite crunchy still. Drain and rinse under cold water.
- To make the dressing, whisk together all the ingredients with 1 tablespoon of water.
- On a big serving plate, mix all the ingredients, including about one-third of the dressing. Mix well and season with salt and pepper.
- You might want to serve some extra dressing on the side, it’s the type of salad that can take loads of dressing.
Japanese salad recipe taken from Junk Food Japan by Scott Hallsworth, publishing by Absolute Press, £26. Photography © David Loftus’
If Scott’s Japanese salad recipe has left you hungry for Japan, how about a 13-night Gastronomic Adventure? Roll your own sushi in Kyoto, dine at an izakaya, and find Scott-style Japanese junk food in Osaka.
