When I was very small I ate from a yellow dish in the shape of a rabbit. He had two compartments. I enjoyed the option for mixing or not that this afforded me. Some foods were separately delicious, others needed intercompartmental blending to help them down. Stewed dried apricots, for example, were far too tart unless actually bathed in the neighbouring custard.
Perhaps this toddler experience accounts for my enjoyment of the concept of the many-small-dish airline tray, but not of course its execution. Perhaps this also explains why I married someone from Japan. For what else is a bento box if it isn’t the culinary zenith of compartmentalized delights?
When a couple of lazy retirees who share an interest in Japan live round the corner from a cheap but pleasing Japanese eatery it is not surprising that they are to be found there most Friday nights.
The service is highly erratic but the chasoba salad is a vegetarian’s delight and I order it every week. Chasoba are noodles made of buckwheat but have green tea added which turns them from pale brown to a beautiful pastel green. On my entrée plate at Sushi Bar Rashai they curl up against a mound of mandolined carrot and cabbage with a sprinkle of nori and sesame. And in commendable isolation, in its very own container which happens to be a silver gravy boat with matching spoon, comes the salad dressing.
Now it is that dressing that I am seeking to replicate in my own kitchen. And it is that dressing that has led to the abomination of wasted food in my kitchen on many recent Saturdays.
I examine its colour. It is quite a pale cream. I rotate the spoon around to check its texture. It coats the spoon yet is runny enough to cover every salad shred without imposing the need for any grotesquery with my chopsticks. I dip a finger in, lick, swish and swallow. There is lemon or its Japanese equivalent yuzu. There is something nutty too – a hint of peanut butter or sesame oil? Kikkoman, not salt reduced I would hazard, is also there and a pinch of sugar.
But has the chef squeezed into this mix a quantity of that quite passable mayo from the cute little kewpie pack or has he gone to some trouble out there in the kitchen. If he has gone to some trouble it’s not much wonder that my version just isn’t coming together.
So here’s a challenge for all my new friends at food writing school. Go to Sushi Bar Rashai, 241 Parramatta Road Annandale. Order chasoba salad. Send me your analysis of the dressing ingredients and if your recipe sends me into shredded cabbage ecstasy I’ll reward you with a packet of roasted wasabi peas. Not any old hot peas. Real ones, heated in Japan.
Author: Prue Gundelach
