Japanese Inspired Salad with Salmon Sashimi and Onsen Eggs


Trying to eat clean and increase my iron intake due to my condition plus general stress and exhaustion. So, I created this Japanese inspired salad which I've made for friends before but without the egg. I just wanted to perfect my onsen eggs so that when I'm good enough at it, I can make them into proper ramen eggs. It's really very easy and a lot of ingredients can be substituted if you're a vegan or a pure vegetarian. It's really the dressing that makes this salad yummy. Recipe serves 1 as a full meal. Trust me. Half-way through this salad and you'll feel full.

Ingredients
1 egg
Salmon Sashimi (you can substitute this with smoked salmon/ other types of sashmi/ seared tuna)
1/2 fried tofu, cubed (aka tau gua as we call it here in Singapore. It's the super firm type)
1/2 cup chickpeas, boiled in lightly salted water
1 avocado, sliced/cubed (however you like to eat it)
As much baby spinach as you like. I had about the whole bottom part of the bowl full of spinach.

Dressing:
2 parts sesame sauce/cream
1 part ponzu (if you don't have ponzu, substitute this with 1 tsp of cider vinegar)
1/3 part light soy sauce
Couple of drops of sesame oil (optional)

Method
The most difficult part of this salad would be the onsen eggs but it would be harder if you wanted poached eggs. A lot of recipes online tell you to take the egg out of the fridge and then boil it so that it doesn't crack. Well, I guess you could do that. Regardless, the magic number of minutes to boil the egg is 5min 30s. Haha...ok, around 6mins.

Then, what I've found is that peeling the shell is the hardest because the middle of the egg is still wobbly and you may just end up smashing the whole thing while peeling (happened to me twice). Trick is to take it out and dunk it into cold water immediately after. I've even left the egg in the fridge for 10 min before peeling the shell off.

As for the dressing, the reason I put in parts instead of standard measurements is because I don't really measure sauces. It's all based on estimates AND I don't really eat a lot of dressing too. So, you know how much dressing you like (if I made this for my mum, it'll be twice the amount that I made for myself) and simply mix all the sesame sauce, ponzu and soy sauce together. I would not put all the soy sauce at one go because every soy sauce have different salt content. I use low salt soy sauce and I actually put in less than 1/3 parts.

Pour the dressing over the salad and toss! Then eat happily knowing that this bowl has omega 3 fatty acids, iron, protein and anti-oxidants. :)



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