W hen you run a small restaurant group, the cooking often takes a back seat. But the part of my job I enjoy the most is developing new dishes. After all the tasting and tweaking, that unanimous nod from every chef in the kitchen gives me a high every time. My working hours are irregular at best, so at home my fridge is always full of salad ingredients and pickles, so I can give my family their five-a-day veg on the fly. Here are three of our staples.
Cornish crab, cucumber and wakame salad
A wonderfully refreshing salad or light starter. I don’t usually have a live brown crab in the fridge, and this makes a lovely vegetarian dish without it, but sometimes you want to push the boat out. If time is tight, a packet of picked white crab meat provides an easy shortcut, and means the dish is the work of minutes (the salad works with cooked, peeled prawns, too).
If you are starting with a whole crab, you won’t need the brown meat for this dish. It’s a crying shame to waste it, so turn it into a dip: pass the brown meat through a fine sieve to make a smooth paste, then mix with 100g mayonnaise and the juice of half a lemon. It’s great for dunking blanched sprouting broccoli stalks or asparagus.
The cucumber and seaweed really benefit from their marinade, so make them ahead of time. Serves four.
For the crab
200g fresh white crab meat, or 1 brown crab, cooked and picked
150g sea salt
4.5 litres water
For the salad
100ml rice vinegar
1 tbsp soy sauce
25g sugar
13g sea salt
20g dried wakame
1 cucumber
50g fresh ginger
First make the salad. Put the rice vinegar, soy, sugar and 8g of the salt in a small saucepan and heat gently, stirring, until the sugar and salt dissolve, then leave to cool.
Put the wakame in a bowl, cover with cold water and set aside for an hour, until fully rehydrated.
Cut off and discard both ends of the cucumber, then, using a vegetable peeler, peel off strips of skin lengthways, so you end up with a striped cucumber, half peeled, half not, in alternating stripes. Cut the cucumber into 1.5mm-thick slices (a mandoline is by far the best tool for this job), then put them in a bowl with 200ml water and the rest of the salt. Massage gently with your hands, then squeeze out the liquid and put the cucumber back in the bowl.
Peel the ginger and cut the flesh into 1mm-thick slices (again, use a mandoline, if you have one). Cut the ginger slices into very thin strips (to speed things up, stack them up a few at a time before cutting) and add to the cucumber, along with the drained and squeezed wakame. Pour on the dressing, toss gently and leave to cure, ideally overnight and for at least two hours.
To serve, transfer the salad to a large plate or bowl, sprinkle over the crab meat and take to the table.
Nasu dengaku
This dish of aubergine with a sweet miso glaze is one of Japan’s best-known side dishes. The glaze usually features dashi, which is often made with dried bonito flakes, but I’ve kept this vegetarian. (If you prefer, use a tablespoon of dashi instead of the water.) Serves four.
Vegetable or sunflower oil, for frying
1 aubergine, cut into 1.5cm-thick discs
3 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp miso paste
1 tbsp water
5g white sesame seeds
Pour enough oil into a deep, high-sided frying pan to come 5mm up the sides. On a medium heat, bring the oil up to 170C. Lay in the slices of aubergine, fry for two minutes, then turn and cook for two minutes more. Lift out the aubergine with a slotted spoon and put on a plate lined with kitchen towel, to drain off excess oil.
Meanwhile, put the sugar, miso and water in a small saucepan and heat gently, stirring, until the sugar dissolves, then turn off the heat.
Arrange the aubergine slices on a plate, spoon over the miso sauce, sprinkle with sesame seeds and serve hot.
Spinach goma-ae
This is very moreish, so you may want to double the quantities. It’s one of the most popular bar snacks at Anzu, our new restaurant in London, but it also works as a side dish. Mirin is a sweet Japanese rice wine that’s used in all sorts, from dressings to grills, marinades and stir-fries. It’s widely available in supermarkets, but if you can’t find it, dry sherry is a good alternative, especially if sweetened with a little sugar. Serves four.
For the goma-ae sauce
25g toasted white sesame seeds, plus one pinch extra to finish
50g tahini
50ml soy sauce
25g sugar
25ml mirin
For the salad
5g sea salt
100g baby spinach
Pound the sesame seeds in a mortar until they start to go gooey, then add the other sauce ingredients and stir to dissolve the sugar.
Bring a large pot of water to a boil and add the salt. Drop in the spinach, stir for 20 seconds, then drain, refresh in cold water (ideally iced) and leave to chill for 20 minutes; this process helps to remove much of the bitterness from the leaves. Drain again, then squeeze as much water from the spinach as you can.
Put the spinach into a pretty bowl, add a heaped teaspoon of the sauce and mix gently but thoroughly, to coat. Sprinkle on a final pinch of sesame seeds and serve at room temperature.
• Next week: main courses. Ken Yamada is executive chef/co-owner of Tonkotsu, Tsuru and Anzu. Thomasina Miers is away.
