Refreshment Needed!

02 September 2008

Tokyo’s hot summer days are not yet over, and although it has been raining a lot in recent days there has been no refreshment, the air has just become even more loaded with humidity. At times the rainfalls were so heavy you’d rather not want to get caught by them, so Saturday was pretty much of an indoors day (got totally soaked when we went out Saturday night, though).

When the sky cleared up on Sunday Simon and I decided to make a little trip to Tokyo’s recently developed bay area Odaiba, a very popular spot for crowds of people to spend their weekends. It was so hot in the sun though that the man made sandy beach facing the Tokyo skyline was nearly empty. Most people had fled into the huge malls, packed with shops, restaurants and entertainment centers.

The way to the observation decks on the fancy looking sky scrapers (all above the eye-catching corporate headquarters of Fuji-TV) and the large amusement park were equally crowded, and it took us quite a while to make it through to the science museum, where we had a fun time very childishly playing around with robots.

Back home just in time before the next thunderstorm, we felt quite exhausted from all the strolling around in the heat - so having a huge, refreshing salad for dinner seemed like a perfect idea. To make it a little bit special, we added some boiled egg and a ripe avocado to the usual lettuce and tomatoes, and I prepared a semi-Italian, semi-Japanese dressing which turned out surprisingly tasty, quite a well-balanced mixture of different condiments, with no single one being too dominant. I found it was a particularly good match with the avocado.

Other than for salad, the dressing would certainly make a good dip for tofu cubes, or for vegetables, such as briefly seared green asparagus. Or for anything else…

I used quite a few Japan-specific ingredients, though, so here are some suggestions in case you cannot find some of them. A key ingredient was the yuzu-based ponzu sauce, which I had bought ready-made in a little bottle. If you cannot find this kind of sauce and you don’t want to try making it on your own (which, to be honest, I haven’t tried yet so far – so sorry, no great recipe yet!), just replace it with a mixture of mirin (should be available at Japan or Asia shops), soy sauce, yuzu juice and – if not too much hassle – some dashi; if you cannot get the yuzu juice, I suggest you try lime juice instead. If you cannot get the sesame paste, replace it either with peanut butter (which has a similar texture) or with ground white sesame seeds.