Recipe: King Salad

Colin is back in Singapore for a month! He presently is buried in books, so to tempt him to emerge, I thought I'd try some of the new concoctions I'd been working on.

First up, my rendition of parma-wrapped baguette bread with mozerella, herbs and tomato. This crostino is something I keep ordering at Buko Nero and I keep wanting to try it for myself. I must say that I made a very hearty Italian version, with fresh herbs and cherry tomatoes. Next time, I will do it as the restaurant does, with dried herbs and slices of raw tomato. The only thing I discovered is what a pain it is to have to make these one at a time.


The second dish was a coq au vin, that we'd made the night before. My chicken looks rather purple, don't you think? This is an old, tried and tested recipe, which you can find back in the blog archives.


The third was a very clever salad, which I can't claim credit for. I call it Auntie C's King Salad. King because it uses lots of ingredients that you can find only in Japanese supermarkets, so this is a rather up-market salad. But it never goes wrong and I haven't discovered a single person yet who doesn't like it. That, in the food world, says a lot.


The secret to this salad is that other than the sesame sauce dressing, you use cubes of silken tofu which blend into the dressing to give a smooth, yummy coating to the salad. It's delicious but also very healthy, which is a plus!

King Salad
1) Mizuna leaves (imported and available from Meida-Ya or Isetan, in the chilled veg section) washed, dried and cut up. I usually use two packets of these for 8 people, though you can use just 1 packet.
2) 2 ripe avocadoes, peel and chop into the salad
3) A handful of cherry tomatoes, either whole or sliced in half
4) One pack of Silken tofu, drained and cut into cubes. Add this to the vegetables
5) Kenko ginger sesame sauce, available from Meida-Ya supermarket. You can make your own ginger sesame dressing but this one is excellent. Add in 3 large tablespoons of this to the vegetables.
6) Toss all the ingredients together.
7) Add to the salad a packet of tobiko and ikura (you need to use slightly larger eggs that will give body, not the small ebiko, which tends to go limp).


For dessert, we had panna cotta with peach and strawberry. I discovered lately that panna cotta with vanilla bean goes marvellously with sweet peach juices. It's a subtle yet punchy combination of smooth and syrupy.

After dinner entertainment was a lot of Wii playing. I would put up hilarious photos of Colin and cousin C. swerving a hand-held steering wheel in MarioKart but I don't think either of them want to be profiled in that light!