Recipe(tried): Sunomono (Cucumber & Wakame Salad)

Hi SGK:

Here's the standard sunomono recipe using cucumbers and wakame -- the other one, called "namasu", was posted earlier in this thread under Japanese Daikon & Carrot Salad.

Cucumber and Wakame Sunomono

2 Japanese cucumbers (if you can't get a hold of them, use 1 regular cucumber with seeds removed)
100 grams wakame seaweed (fresh or re-hydrated)

Dressing:
3 Tablespoons Japanese rice vinegar
1 Tablespoon sugar
1 Tablespoon dashi (smoked bonito stock)
1/2 teaspoon salt

Thinly slice the cucumber, and sprinkle some salt to soften. Chop wakame into bite-sized pieces. Rinse away the salt and squeeze the moisture out of cucumbers. In a separate container, add the vinegar, sugar, dashi, and salt together. Add cucumbers and wakame into the vinegar mixture and toss/mix well. Chill and serve.

You can add minced ginger and/or (really, really tiny whitefish) to this sunomono.

Basically, sunomono is a dish meant to complement oily, fatty food in traditional Japanese cuisine like tempura, so that's why we don't use sesame oil in the dressing. I've noticed a lot of sunomono recipes on the net and in cookbooks written by non-Japanese that use sesame oil. But for the Japanese, that defeats the whole purpose of serving sunomono dishes. In my opinion, it would be more appropriate to call these dishes "salads" than sunomono.

Heritage is important in Asian cuisine, but more importantly, these recipes and cooking techniques have been handed down with health and nutritional benefits in mind. Remember that origins of Chinese cuisine goes back several thousands of years (not sure really, but I would be willing to bet at least 3000 years) and for Japanese cuisine, we can trace it back by at least 2 milleniums. That's a lot of history and information to absorb, not to mention the wisdom of our ancestors. I don't even know how our ancestors came up with these tips (I guess trial-by-error), but scientific evidence proves how right they were (see my discussion on miso soup). The sad things is that while the Japanese used to be one of the healthiest in the world, with their naturally low-fat cuisine, recent statistics indicate a higher incidence of coronary disease and certain forms of cancer as their diet becomes more Westernized.

Speaking of restaurants, (I don't even try to respond to Asian restaurant recipe requests these days because so much of what's considered Chinese or Japanese are actually American originals) I have watched a lot of "Japanese" restaurants serve Chinese food (I live in NYC), especially those owned and managed by Chinese and Koreans. Just recently, I went to a "Japanese" restaurant in Greenwich Village with some friends -- I noticed that the maitre d' was Chinese, so I ordered sushi (the sushi chefs here, especially the head sushi chef, are usually Japanese) while a friend ordered a scallop dinner. What she got was deep-fried scallops coated in batter mixed in sweet & sour sauce!!!!! [LOL] She was SO upset that she returned the dish back to the kitchen, and changed her order to sushi. So just because the restaurant advertises itself as Japanese doesn't guarantee that you're going to get Japanese food. :-)

I would imagine that there is a huge Chinese population in Vancouver -- and I'm not sure if there is a sizable Japanese and/or Japanese-Candian population there as well. That could be one reason why your sunomono salad is served in Japanese restaurants, because bean threads are used primarily in Chinese cuisine. (One of the authors of the cookbook you mentioned has a Chinese surname.)