Smoked Salmon Salad with Roasted Sesame Dressing


Date Published: July 24th, 2020 | Last Updated: July 24th, 2020
Author: Abby |Category: salad, healthy, quick and easy, <15 mins, asian
Serves: 1 person as a main, or 2-3 as a side salad
Prep time: 8 mins | Cook time: 30 seconds to toss the salad

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I love this salad. It’s so flavourful, satisfying, and best of all it’s really easy and quick. You can easily customize it too. I came up with it one morning while trying to make a quick lunch for the fam and at the same time clearing the fridge of ingredients – I never expected it to turn out so good!

This recipe sounds fancy smancy but it’s the quickest most ridiculously easy salad to put together as long as you have roasted sesame dressing on hand. You can make the dressing yourself from scratch (the recipe is on my to-do list to upload, I swear), but often times I let the good people at Kewpie do the hard work for me especially if I’m in a rush or just feeling extra lazy. Kewpie does such a fantastic job with this dressing that Toby and I like to keep a 1L bottle in the fridge and use it on SO many things as a dipping sauce – I highly recommend picking up a bottle next time you’re at an Asian grocer.

Roasted sesame dressing is commonly seen in many Japanese restaurants served on their side salads in bento boxes. It’s a creamy dressing that’s packed with roasted sesame flavour. It elevates the most basic salads to another level, including this one. While you can use this dressing with virtually any salad ingredient, I found that when you pair it with smoked salmon, something absolutely magical happens. The heavy savoury smoked salmon paired with the dressing is balanced out by the fresh crisp veggies that results in a refreshing salad with a heap of flavour.

Next time you’re in a rush to pack lunch but still want something delicious and healthy, think of this salad! Or better yet, next time you’re inviting people over for a dinner party but you’ve exhausted all your energy on the main dish, you can quickly whip up this salad as a starter or a side dish to impress.

I’ve written this recipe with veggies I commonly have in my fridge as a staple in most of my salads (lettuce, cherry tomatoes, red bell peppers/capsicums, and cucumbers) but of course you can change it up to whatever veggies you like such as grated carrot, radishes, spinach, red onions…etc. This recipe is so easily customizable. The only thing I don’t usually pair with this dressing is cheese. I find that the creaminess of the dressing tends to overpower most cheeses so why bother adding it in – fewer calories, amiright?

Anyways, without further ado, here’s the recipe!

Happy cooking!

Ingredients you’ll need:

  • 2 handfuls of lettuce, washed and shredded
  • 1 handful of cherry tomatoes, sliced in halves
  • 1 handful of cucumber, chopped
  • 1 handful of red bell pepper/capsicum, chopped
  • 50g smoked salmon, sliced – you can use smoked trout as well which I find is usually cheaper and tastes very close to smoked salmon
  • Kewpie roasted sesame dressing to taste
  • Freshly ground black pepper

Feel free to customize the ingredients to whatever you like or whatever you’ve got in your fridge. The bold flavours of the salmon and the dressing makes this salad pretty forgiving with whatever veggies you want to chuck in it.

Directions:

Mix everything together in a large bowl and toss with as much dressing as your heart desires. Done!

I hope you enjoyed this recipe as much as I do. Let me know how yours turned out in the comments! You can follow me on instagram, youtube and facebook to see all the recipes I post!

Summarized Recipe:

Smoked salmon salad with roasted sesame dressing

Date Published: July 24th, 2020 | Last Updated: July 24th, 2020
Author: Abby |Category: salad, healthy, quick and easy, <15 mins, asian
Serves: 1 person as a main, or 2-3 as a side salad
Prep time: 8 mins | Cook time: 30 seconds to toss the salad

Ingredients:

  • 2 handfuls of lettuce, washed and shredded
  • 1 handful of cherry tomatoes, sliced in halves
  • 1 handful of cucumber, chopped
  • 1 handful of red bell pepper/capsicum, chopped
  • 50g smoked salmon, sliced
  • Kewpie roasted sesame dressing to taste
  • Freshly ground black pepper

Directions:

  1. Mix everything together in a large bowl and toss with as much dressing as your heart desires. Done!

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Spicy Asian Tuna Salad


Date Published: July 4th, 2020 | Last Updated: July 4th, 2020
Author: Abby |Category: sides/salads, <15mins
Serves: 4 | Prep time: 10mins | Cook time: 5mins

Jump to recipe | Watch the video

Last weekend Toby’s dad took us deep sea tuna fishing with a fishing charter in Portland, Vic. My fishing experience is fairly limited but thankfully the charter set up all the rods for us, so all we had to do was wait until a tuna caught on and we take turns reeling them in. Luckily mine didn’t put up too much of a fight but Toby’s gave him a good workout. There was a limit of two tuna per person. We drove around for hours and caught some here and there, but alas we were two fish short of our max. We were on the boat for roughly 6 hours total. We took 4 fish home in total, ranging from 10-15kg (good thing Toby’s parents have a big freezer back on the farm). We youtube’d how to fillet a tuna and we filleted one tuna that night and have been eating it ever since. I’ve been scrambling to find some good tuna recipes and came upon some asian-inspired ones and played around with them. This recipe is the result of it! (I also used up some tuna in the salmon chowder recipe and subbed out the fish type – turned out delicious!)

This recipe has asian-inspired flavours. Some ingredients aren’t very traditionally asian (like the cranberries and raw carrots), but they have their role to play and I promise the overall flavour packs a punch! You end up with a mildly spicy, kinda sweet, crunchy, sesame tuna salad in the end. This recipe is easy and comes together quickly! You can watch the video below to guide you through the recipe.

Anyways, without further ado, here’s the recipe! If you have any comments or suggestions, I’d love to hear from you in the comment section! You can follow me on instagram, youtube and facebook to see all the recipes I post!

Happy cooking!

Ingredients you’ll need:

  • Dressing:
    • 4 Tbsp mayonnaise
    • 1 Tbsp sesame oil
    • 2 tsp light soy sauce
    • 2 Tbsp asian chilli paste or sambal (I like to use the Lao Gan Ma crispy chilli oil (drained), but any chilli paste should do – you may want to adjust the proportions if your chilli sauce is very spicy). You can even use sriracha.
    • 1 1/2 tsp honey
    • 1/2 Tbsp ginger, grated
  • 200g cooked or canned tuna, flaked and drained well
    • You can use canned tuna, but for my purposes I was trying to use up the tuna fillets from our fishing trip so I quickly cooked the tuna in the oven at 180˚C for 10mins and flaked it for this recipe.
  • 1/3 cup dried cranberries
  • 3 Tbsp green onions, chopped (~2 stalks)
  • 1/3 cup carrots, chopped finely
  • 2 tsp sesame seeds
  • 1/2 tsp chilli powder
  • 2 Tbsp lemon juice

I was quite conservative with the spice level in this recipe – just spicy enough to leave your mouth with a slight tingle. You can choose to omit the chili powder altogether if you’re not into spicy or even double it if you’re a spice fiend. The spiciness of your chili paste will also determine how spicy your tuna salad is.

Directions:

In a bowl, mix together the dressing ingredients: mayonnaise, sesame oil, light soy sauce, asian chilli oil, honey, ginger. Set aside.

In a bigger bowl, mix together the rest of the ingredients: tuna, cranberries, green onion, carrots, sesame seeds, chili powder and lemon juice. Once combined, add in the dressing and mix until incorporated. Serve!

You can serve this as a snack or appetizer or side dish. My favourite way to serve this is in some lettuce leaves as wraps. The crisp and freshness of the lettuce cuts through the heaviness of the salad. You can also have it with crackers or spread in a tortilla to make a burrito or even between some bread to make an easy tuna salad with a punch. I also like to serve it with lemon wedges for extra zing!

Watch the Video Tutorial!

Summarized Recipe:

Spicy Asian Tuna Salad

Date Published: July 4th, 2020 | Last Updated: July 4th, 2020
Author: Abby |Category: sides/salads, <15mins
Serves: 4 | Prep time: 10mins | Cook time: 5mins

Ingredients:

  • Dressing:
    • 4 Tbsp mayonnaise
    • 1 Tbsp sesame oil
    • 2 tsp light soy sauce
    • 2 Tbsp asian chilli oil (I like to use the Lao Gan Ma crispy chilli oil (drained), but any chilli oil/sauce should do – you may want to adjust the proportions if your chilli sauce is very spicy)
    • 1 1/2 tsp honey
    • 1/2 Tbsp ginger, grated
  • 1 1/2 cups (200g) cooked/canned tuna, flaked and drained
  • 1/3 cup dried cranberries
  • 3 Tbsp green onions, chopped (~2 stalks)
  • 1/3 cup carrots, chopped finely
  • 2 tsp sesame seeds
  • 1/2 tsp chilli powder
  • 2 Tbsp lemon juice

Directions:

  1. In a bowl, mix together the dressing ingredients: mayonnaise, sesame oil, light soy sauce, asian chilli oil, honey, ginger. Set aside.
  2. In a bigger bowl, mix together the rest of the ingredients: tuna, cranberries, green onion, carrots, sesame seeds, chili powder and lemon juice. Once combined, add in the dressing and mix until incorporated. Serve!

Notes:

  • You can serve this as a snack or appetizer or side dish.
  • My favourite way to serve this is in some lettuce leaves as wraps. You can also have it with crackers or spread in a tortilla to make a burrito or even between some bread to make an easy tuna salad with a punch.

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