Japanese Cuisine - Salads

Salads

Some restaurants offer tsukidashi (つきだし?) or otōshi(ja) (お通し?), a starter snack of sorts equivalent to the amuse-bouche or hors-d'oeuvre, but it has been reported some establishments include this in the bill almost like a mandatory cover charge.

The o-hitashi or hitashi-mono (おひたし, ?) is boiled green-leaf vegetables bunched and cut to size, steeped in dashi broth, eaten with dashes of soy sauce. Another item is sunomono (酢の物, lit "vinegar item"?), which could be made with wakame seaweed, or be something like a kōhaku namasu (紅白なます, "red white namasu"?) made from thin toothpick slices of daikon and carrot. The so-called vinegar that is blended with the ingredient here is often sanbaizu(ja) (三杯酢, "three cupful/spoonful vinegar"?) which is a blend of vinegar, mirin, and soy sauce. A tosazu(ja) (土佐酢, "Tosa vinegar"?) adds katsuo dashi to this. Note sparing use of oil, compared with Western salads.

An aemono(ja) (和え物?) is another group of items, describable as a sort of "tossed salad" or "dressed" (though aemono also includes thin strips of squid or fish sashimi (itozukuri) etc. similarly prepared). One types are goma-ae (胡麻和え?) where usually vegetables such as green beens are tossed with white or black sesame seeds ground in a suribachi mortar bowl, flavored additionally with sugar and soy sauce. shira-ae (白和え?) adds tofu (bean curd) in the mix. An aemono is tossed with vinegar-white miso mix and uses wakegi scallion and baka-gai (バカガイ or 馬鹿貝, a trough shell (Mactra sinensis?) as standard.