Issue #160: Japanese Turnip Salad
What Is a Salad, Anyway? A Few Ideas and a Recipe for Japanese Turnips with Preserved Plum and Shiso
It’s salad time. Sure, you can make and enjoy salads throughout the year—just ask Emily Nunn who writes the perennially entertaining and inspiring Department of Salad Substack. But now that fresh local vegetables and even a few fruits have come into farm stands and farmers markets in the Northeast, the salad making is very fine, indeed.
I’m happy to make a meal of salad, whether a big, generous one, such as Niçoise with tuna, olives, green beans and potato, or many little ones, such as Middle Eastern meze or Korean banchan. I’ve written about southeast Asian grilled meat salads (Issue #59) and my favorite vinaigrette (Issue #131). When I travel for any length of time it’s usually salad I miss. Although we ate an amazing variety of vegetable dishes during our two weeks in India earlier this year, I craved salad, which is to say, anything raw, crisp, and fresh.
Come to think of it, I’m not even certain what constitutes a “salad.” I can think of salads that are raw, salads that are cooked, salads that contain almost no vegetable at all. My mind goes first to leafy greens tossed with that dressing, above, something I serve with almost every meal. But then there’s tuna salad, ham salad, potato salad, pasta salad, fruit salad, jellied salads, and millions more. Salad, what are you?
This week I made two salads that seem perfect for the moment. The first I’ve already written about in Issue # 61, sweet cherries with jalapeño and cilantro. It’s a salad created by Israeli food writer Hila Alpert, popularized by the beloved restaurant Habasta in Tel Aviv’s Carmel Market. I start to make it every year around this time, when cherries from the Pacific Northwest first appear in the grocery store.
And then I keep making it throughout the summer, when local cherries become available. It’s simple, pretty, delicious, and totally unexpected. Everyone asks for the recipe, which you can also find in the new Jewish Holiday Table cookbook from the Jewish Food Society and on their website, here.
The second is my own invention, which began with an inspiration from a recipe I saw in Nancy Singleton Hachisu’s book Preserving the Japanese Way. It’s hard for me to resist bunches of perfect, little, snow-white hakurei turnips when I see them. I love equally the leaves, which I cook and use as I would spinach, and the roots themselves, which I slice and eat raw like radishes or roast and glaze like their bigger, purplish cousins.
But on one of the first very warm days this week, I wanted something else. I salted the turnips to draw out some of their moisture, grabbed a handful of purple shiso from a pot growing on our deck, and tossed it with umeboshi plum, a drop of soy, and a splash of Korean plum wine. Let’s just say, it worked.
The salad is totally simple if you have the ingredients. Shopping is the bigger challenge. You’ll want to find pristine, white turnips of similar size. Purple shiso can be hard to find outside farmers markets. Green shiso works fine, too. So does perilla (which is another name for shiso), or even opal or holy basil. Umemboshi plums, sometimes called salted or sour plums, are available in Asian markets and I’ve even seen them in the Asian section of our local food co-op. They are salted and preserved and will keep forever in the fridge. I bought mine in Japan more than a decade ago.
Korean plum wine or liquor, called maesil-ju, is an alcoholic beverage that’s used often as a condiment in Korean cooking. It is sweet and tart and you can find it online or in an H-Mart if you have one nearby. You can substitute apple cider vinegar and a pinch of sugar. Or even a drizzle of pomegranate molasses or a dab tamarind concentrate.
RECIPE: Japanese Turnip Salad with Plum and Shiso
Makes about 4 servings
1 or 2 bunches Hakurei turnips
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 tablespoon minced umemboshi plum
4 or 5 leaves purple shiso, thinly shredded
1 tablespoon Korean plum wine or maesil-ju, or 2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar and a pinch of sugar
1/2 teaspoon light soy sauce
Start by cleaning the turnips, which can have quite a bit of sand and dirt trapped in their tops. Slice off the leaves, leaving about 1/2 to 1 inch of the stems attached, as shown above. Soak them in cold water for a few minutes to loosen any dirt. Using the tip of a pairing knife, remove the long, thin tail and gently scrape off any brown spots, especially around the base of the stems. Use the knife to separate the stems under cold running water to wash away any dirt or sand trapped therein.
Slice the smaller turnips in half and the bigger ones in quarters through the tops so that you have relatively similar size pieces. Toss with the sea salt and gently rub it into the flesh. Set aside for 10 minutes or more to draw out any liquid. Discard any that accumulates in the bottom of the bowl and use a paper towel to pat the turnips dry. Add the plum, shiso, plum wine, and soy and toss the turnips to coat. The salad is ready to serve. I think the flavor is best at room temperature, but it can also be chilled and stored for a couple of days.
