Cucumber and Wakame Sunomono

Sunomono (酢の物) is a Japanese salad made with really simple ingredients: rice vinegar and soy sauce. Based on the ratio between rice vinegar and soy sauce, you can tweak the recipe to make either a nibaizu (二倍ず) or sanbaizu (三倍酢). Nibaizu uses 3:2 ratio of rice vinegar and soy sauce, while sanbaizu uses 3:1 ratio of rice vinegar and soy sauce. These two are the easiest to remember, but there are other ratios to create different dressing, and other ingredients can be added as well, such as sugar (or mirin), katsuobushi, and sesame seeds.

I am going to make a really simple sunomono using two ingredients: english cucumber and wakame. For the dressing, I am going to use a basic sanbaizu plus mirin, so I will need 3 tablespoon rice vinegar, 1 tablespoon soy sauce, and 2 tablespoon mirin. First, mix all the dressing ingredients and heat over a low heat in a sauce pot for 5 minutes. Then let it cool. If you are fond of this dressing, you can make a bigger batch and keep it in the fridge. But I usually just make some whenever I crave for refreshing and light salad since this is a really simple dressing recipe.

You can either use Japanese cucumbers (about 5), or one English cucumber. I like making stripes pattern on my cucumber, so I peel away some of the skin, then thinly slice the whole thing. Place the cucumber in a mixing bowl and sprinkle with salt to draw out excess moisture, this makes the cucumber crunchier. Rinse and squeeze out as much water as possible. For the wakame, soak 2 tablespoon of dried wakame in plenty of cold water for 10 minutes, then rinse under cold running water and squeeze out as much water as possible. Place cucumber and wakame in a mixing bowl, pour the dressing and mix well. Then sprinkle with a bit of toasted sesame seeds and mix again. Divide into individual servings, and top with some slivers of gari (pickled ginger) for a pretty contrasting color. Done!