12 years ago we arrived in Tokyo and moved in our first Tokyoite apartment in Nezu. At that time I was working at the university of Tokyo, a 5min walk from there. Settling in Tokyo without speaking Japanese was a lot of fun but not always easy. A. was not working at that time yet and he’s missions most of the days was to go and investigate for what we needed and then buy it and install it: washing machine, telephone, desktop computer, internet… We were very lucky to have friends to help us. The thing that took us the most time everyday was grocery shopping if you remember my post there. Thanks not only to my Japanese cooking book for beginners but also to our friend Shotaro, who is a very good cook and was living in Tokyo at that time. He came at home and we cooked together. For a reason very unclear, while I was grocery shopping yesterday I saw some nice sticky potato or yamaimo 山芋, and suddenly remembered about that salad we cooked together: cabbage, yamaimo and sesame dressing. And because before starting Tokyo Paris Sisters with Prunellia, I already had a site to share French recipes with our Japanese friends and Japanese recipes with our French friends, I just dug in to find that recipe back!!!! It was even simpler than I thought! At that time we used industrial sesame dressing but last night I came with a vegan homemade version that was really nice! So here is the recipe for 4 servings as starter:
For the dressing: a piece of yamaimo of about 1-2cm; 2tbs of sesame powder, known as surigoma-擂り胡麻 ; 1tbsp of soya sauce; water; salt.
Fir the salad: 1/2 cabbage; a large piece of yamaimo, or half one yamaimo.
Cut the cabbage in bite size chunks, if you like it crunchy use it raw, if you like softer, blanched it and cool it. Cut the yamaimo in 5-8mm x 4cm sticks. I a serving bowl put both ingredients. Now prepare the dressing. Grat the yamaimo to obtain what is called tororo-トロロ, a kind of slime that will give a creamy consistency to the dressing, add the surigoma, add the soya sauce, then mix well. The mix is quite dense and now you need to add water little by little still mixing (optimally with chop sticks) to obtain the consistency you want, it as to be creamy without being too much liquid. Top the vegetables and enjoy!!!
