This salad is not for the faint-hearted home cook. Designed to impress, this Kingfish Sashimi Salad requires sophisticated plating, a gourmet palate and use of a unique ingredient. Inspired by Japanese flavours, your guests will appreciate you all the more!
For the 1st white radish, using a mandoline, slice thinly.
For the 2nd white radish, cut into thick slices about 10-15 cm thick. Using a range of small cookie cutters, cut out cylinders of varying sizes.
For the 3rd white radish, use a wide peeler and shave into wide strips.
In a small mixing bowl, add lukewarm water to the dried organic butterfly pea flowers. Let it sit for 45 minutes.
In a large mixing bowl, mix together white vinegar, sugar and salt. After 45 minutes, add the now dark blue water of flowers to the pickling mixture.
Add all the white radish into the pickling water with the butterfly pea flowers and let it sit in the fridge overnight.
The next day, remove all the pickled white radish from the fridge. Give them all a rinse to get rid of the dried flowers sticking to the radish.
Pat dry and set aside.
Salad
In a small saucepan, bring water to the boil. Blanch peas for 2 minutes. Remove and run under cold water to stop the cooking process. Pat dry and set aside.
Using a knife or mandoline, slice red radishes thinly.
Cut the kingfish fillets into 16-20 thin to medium slices.
Salad Dressing
In a small mixing bowl, add 6 tbsp of Japanese Kewpie mayonnaise.
Using a small sieve, sieve 1 tsp of wasabi powder onto the mayonnaise so that no clumps will form.
Mix until well combined.
Assembly
This is an individually plated salad which you can serve as an entrée salad or side dish to your main course. The instructions below are for 1 plate. Repeat this 4 times:
On each plate, add 1 ½ tbsp of wasabi mayonnaise in the middle of the plate. Using the back of a regular spoon smear some upwards in an ‘S’ motion and some downwards in the same motion.
Add 4 slices of pickled radish of varying sizes on the sides of the mayonnaise.
Add 2-3 slices of red radish next to some of the pickled radish.
Add 4-5 slices of kingfish sashimi in a herringbone fashion.
Roll up 4 shaved slices of pickled radish and place anywhere near the kingfish sashimi.
Add 4-cylinder chunks of pickled radish anywhere around the salad.
Sprinkle some peas and micro herbs leaves around the part of the plate that is empty.
Season with some cracked pepper.
Serve.
Notes
The freshness of the fish is imperative for this salad. Purchase quality fish specifically for sashimi so that slicing is much easier. You can even purchase kingfish sashimi all ready to go if you don’t want to worry about cutting it yourself.
You can use butterfly pea flower powder for this process. Please note that although the water is blue, by adding vinegar to the process, it makes the white radish purple.
You can purchase Kewpie mayonnaise in the Japanese/Asian aisle of your supermarket. You may also see that they have a wasabi mayonnaise version. However, I still prefer adding good quality wasabi powder to the process.
Wasabi powder usually comes in a small tin which you can also find Japanese/Asian aisle of your supermarket.