Sunomono - Cucumber and Wakame Salad

Just a quickie!

Seeing as I've posted my Seared Tuna with Daikon Dressing recipe, I thought I'd better post this lovely little Japanese salad dish, which I chose to serve on the side. Lovely with all sorts of things as a side dish, including Teriyaki grilled meats and fish, or you could even go a bit 'fusion' and serve it up with little Thai crab cakes.

Sunomono

Serves 2 as a side dish, 42 calories per serving.

Ingredients
1/2 cucumber, halved and de-seeded (180g) [20]
5g wakame seaweed [13]
2tsp caster sugar (for Paleo use raw honey, or stevia etc.) [32]
3 ½ tbsp. rice wine vinegar (or use apple cider for Paleo) [18]
Salt

Method
Finely slice the deseeded cucumber (on a mandolin, or with the slicing attachment on a food processor is quickest). Sprinkle with about 1 tsp salt, toss, and leave to drain in a colander for about 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, put the wakame into a bowl with plenty of cold water, to soak for 5-10 minutes. On the subject of wakame, it's quite amazing stuff in terms of how much it expands when you soak it in water. The photo below shows what 20g looks like dry, and after soaking, just in case you thought that 5g was a typo! If you can get it shredded up like this, it will save you some chopping - you can even buy it in some large supermarkets these days.

Mix together the sugar and vinegar, with a pinch of salt, until the sugar dissolves. Once hydrated, throw the wakame into the colander with the cucumber, toss together, rinse the excess salt off under the cold water tap, and drain, gentle squeezing all of the excess water out. Place in a bowl, and toss in the dressing. Leave for the flavours to develop for at least 15 minutes, if you can. Enjoy!