Shabu Shabu Salad featuring Brad's Japanese Garden Blend Microgreens

This week I'm writing a recipe specially crafted to highlight our latest microgreens creation: Brad's Japanese Garden Blend. That's me! I'm Brad. Everyone thought it fitting that I should put my money where my mouth is and come up with something for the blog. 
Brad's Japanese Garden Blend is a mix of mizuna mustard, wasabi mustard, daikon radish, buckwheat, and shungiku. It tastes great all by itself, and frankly I was tempted to send in a picture of it on a plate, beside a little piece of grilled fish and some rice. 
"That's how you should eat it!" says I.
"That's cheating." says Chantal.
Fine. You want a bit of the old razzle-dazzle? You're gonna get it. I give you:

Shabu Shabu Salad
Shabu shabu is the Japanese style of hot pot. It's also the Japanese term for the cooking method of dunking thinly sliced meats or vegetables briefly in simmering water or broth. We're going to use this method to cook some thinly sliced beef, then build a salad of  Brad's Japanese Garden Blend, onions, beef, and tasty miso-sesame sauce. Nice clean flavours, pretty dang healthy, and you will be left wanting a second helping.
When I write recipes for our blog I usually cook the dishes at my sister's house during our weekly Wednesday night hangouts. She has an overly energetic, almost-5-year-old son, and she greatly enjoys the two hours of peace gained by not having to cook dinner one night a week. The boy loves hot pot. I mean, he loves hot pot. When he particularly likes something, he'll say, "I love this almost as much as hot pot!" So when uncle comes over saying it's shabu shabu salad for dinner, all the boy hears is "HOT POT." There may have been a brief episode of screaming at uncle on this particular Wednesday. 

Ingredients

For the salad:
Brad's Japanese Garden Blend
White onion, thinly sliced
Beef, thinly sliced
Water (or broth), boiling


For the sauce:
3 Tbs sesame seeds, ground
2 tsp miso paste 
2 Tbs mirin
1 Tbs soy sauce 
2 Tbs mayonnaise (kewpie preferably)
1 tsp white vinegar

Method
  1. Throw the beef in the freezer for 30min. This will make it so much easier to slice thinly. Slice your onion into thin strips, pole to pole. Place the onion into a small bowl of cold water. 
  2. To make the sauce, begin by toasting your sesame seeds in a hot pan until golden. Grind in a mortar and pestle roughly, it doesn't need to be fine and even, some texture is good.
  3. Combine ground sesame, miso paste, mirin, soy, mayo, and vinegar in a bowl. Whisk until smooth.
  4.  Boil a small pot of water, or broth. I was serving this salad with miso soup, so I separated a portion of my dashi and used that.
  5. Thinly slice your beef, or protein of choice, against the grain. Using a spider or slotted spoon, briefly dip in a portion of the beef, about 10-15 seconds, or until you see the pink parts of the meat change colour. Place meat on a paper towel lined plate to cool. Repeat with the rest of the meat.
  6. Drain the onions and pat them dry.
  7. To build the salad, layer a bed of Brad's Japanese Garden Blend, then the onions, then the beef, then drizzle over the sauce.

 

I served this alongside some miso soup, short grain rice, and quick pickled cucumbers.

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