Nici Wickes: Japanese-style rice salad

It’s a good idea with a long weekend to make a big batch of some staples that can be eaten for lunch or dinner, dressed up of down. This rice salad is the perfect example; serve it with smoked salmon or a steak or teriyaki chicken or just on its own.   

Makes about 6 cups   

  

Ingredients 

4 cups cooked brown rice or sushi rice   

1 cup shelled edamame beans (avail in frozen section of supermarket)   

½-1 telegraph cucumber, sliced thinly   

3-4 radish, sliced thinly   

1 cup pickled mushrooms – see below   

Options to add – tuna, hot smoked salmon, shredded carrot   

¼ cup store-bought roasted sesame dressing   

Squeeze of lemon juice   

Black sesame seeds to serve  

  

Method 

Toss all of the ingredients together (hold some radish and the sesame seeds back, to garnish), tumble onto a serving plate and drizzle over sesame dressing, some of the mushroom pickling juices and the lemon juice.  

Scatter over remaining radish and sesame seeds to serve.   

  

Pickled mushrooms  

Makes one jar   

Ingredients 

200g brown button mushrooms, thinly sliced  

1 tbsp finely diced onion  

1 tsp grated ginger   

1 tsp brown sugar   

75mls rice wine vinegar   

1 tbsp soy sauce  

Boiling water  

  

Method 

Cram sliced mushrooms, onion, ginger and sugar into a jar. Pour over rice wine vinegar, soy sauce and then boiling water to cover. Leave for 2 hours or overnight.

Seal and keep in fridge until ready to use. 

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack team podcast
from News Talks.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
A'd be thirteen to ten on newstalalks'd be Thank you
so much for all of your texts and your emails
this morning. Jack loved, loved, loved, loved your four loves.
How about that four loves loved your opening comments this morning,
fantastic description of New York. Have only been there once.
We'd love to go there once again. It's on my
bucket list. This is what It's one of those great

(00:31):
cities for coming back to. I reckon. There are only
so many cities on Earth that you really want to
visit multiple times in your life, but I reckon New
York's one of those. Not only do you never run
out of stuff to do, but also it's great to
see how a city changes, but doesn't you know? And
I feel like the city here is always in motion.
So thank you for that. Ninety two ninety two if
you want to send us a message this morning. Time
now to catch up with our cook, Nikki Works. Morning

(00:53):
to Nikki.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
Yes, Morena. Had I known that you were in the
Great Big Apple, I would have perhaps pulled out a
New York cheesecake or some Buffalo wings or something like that.
How thanks, you're a neck.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
To be here to pull out those.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
That's true, It's true.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
The color of the food in New York, how fantastic.
You lucky thing.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
I always think it's the world's biggest food court. You
want it, They've got it basically somewhere, and there's going
to be a good version of it somewhere. So yeah,
it's certainly have been going hungry over the last few days.
You have a little bit of a long weekend treat
for us, a bit of an opportunity to use the

(01:38):
long weekend to make a big batch of some staples
with a twist to get you through the next week period.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
Yeah, I really do, because I think it's nice when
you've got a long weekend for those people that don't
want to be cooking all weekend to make a big
batch of something and then you can sort of be
scooping into it. And in this case, I have made
a big batch of Japanese rice salad. And I know
that might not sound like the sort of thing that
you were really after. Maybe you were hoping for a cheesecake.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
You can do that.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Too, but this selling is just great. It does you
need to. When you're doing a big batch of food
or food that you want to last for a few
days or even longer. You want to make sure that
it's fruit well. What us chefs refer to is hold well.
You know, like there's a cold, snow is going to
start weeping after a short period of time, and that

(02:25):
sort of thing. So you want to make sure that
it really does hold well. And this one does. It's
just great. Now. Look I have used. It's sort of
a healthy too, which I quite like over a long weekend.
As soon as we over indulge of a long weekend.
This makes about six cups. Now you can double triple
it whatever. But first thing I do is pickle some mushrooms,
actually Jack, and these just take a few hours or overnight,

(02:48):
and I just love these. All I do is I
grab abouts, you know, I sort of packet or about
two hundred grand's a couple of handfuls of brown button mushrooms.
You could use the white button mushrooms if you like,
but the button ones are quite tight, which we love.
Thinly slice those, or if they're really tiny, you could
have them whole and throw those in a jar ready,

(03:08):
cram them into a jar, and then put in one
teaspoon of finely diced onion, or you could use some
chives or spring onion, one teaspoon of grated ginger, one
teaspoon of brown sugar, seventy five meals of rice wine
vinegar easily available in the supermarket, and one big tablespoon
of soy sauce. Mix those together and pour those over
your mushrooms, and then top up the jar with boiling

(03:31):
water and just leave it for about two hours or overnight.
They'll also keep forages. And they're just the most beautiful
pickled mushrooms, and we're going to use that in this
beautiful salad. The salad is just a manner of tossing
a whole lot of ingredients together. I've got four cups
of brown rice or sushi rice, both of those quite
short grained, need a good rinse before they get cooked.

(03:53):
I always use the steaming method, Jack. I've long given
up trying to boil rice, and I don't have a
rice steamer, but I just steam it in a pot.
One cup of those beautiful shelled it of marmade beans
that you can find in the frozen sea of the Oh.
Don't you love those I love them. Make sure when
you're selecting them you get the ones that are shelled,
otherwise you're going to be potting them. And I just

(04:14):
pour boiling water over those, and it's enough to kind
of cook them enough. Half to one hole telegraph cucumber,
slice that nice and thinly, three to four radishes, your
pickled mushrooms. And then you can add to this, which
I would sort of toss over at the end, maybe
some tuna chunks, maybe some hot smoked salmon, maybe some

(04:35):
sugar carrot. But you don't need to. It's fine, so
toss all the ingredients together. I do hold back some
of the radish for the top because it looks so beautiful.
Tumble it onto a big old serving plate, and then
drizzle over again. It's that sore bought roasted sesame dressing.
Oh I can drink this stuff. It's so good, and
so be quite lavish with that. Also, you know, drizzle

(04:59):
over a little bit of that pickling juice, a good
squeeze of lemon juice, and then scatter over your remaining
radish and your sesame, and you've just got this beautiful, colorful,
amazing salad that you can just spoon out for lunch
or for dinner, maybe on its own, maybe together with
some barbecue chops or as I say, some smoked salmon.

(05:21):
It's really delicious. It's just so good.

Speaker 2 (05:24):
It sounds fantastic. Yeah, and like you said, it's perfect
for the long weekend as well. Okay, thank you. So
what we will do is, look, everyone knows the deal.
We're going to go and put it on the website.
Hopefully no one's been scribbling down notes over the last
couple of minutes. If you want to make that at
home this weekend, it's really easy. Nicky's recipes are always
up on the website just a few minutes after she's
been on with us. Thank you so much. Nick. You

(05:45):
have a fantastic long weekend.

Speaker 1 (05:47):
Yeah you too. Enjoy that beautiful, big, thrumming city.

Speaker 2 (05:50):
I will do, NICKI wi cookber For more from Saturday
Morning with Jack Tame. Listen live to News Talks ed
B from nine am Saturday, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.