A couple Sundays ago, I was lazing around the house with the family (including my niece Rachel), and thinking that it was definitely time for a new salad. We started throwing out ideas and the one that stuck was making a salad inspired by a favorite dish. There were a few contestants, but in the end… Suki Yaki won.
We narrowed down the ingredients and chose cabbage as the ‘salad’ base. Although, the next week I substituted Russian kale for cabbage and it was AMAZING.
There is definitely a lot of prep for this salad; marinate and bake the tofu, roast the kobocha squash, cook the wheat berries (for an hour!), and cook the brown rice, but it’s worth it and it can be had for a couple of meals, dressed ahead of time or not. The cabbage and / or Russian kale will hold up for at least 12 hours dressed.
- boil and then simmer ½ C wheat berries in 1¾ C water for 1 hour
- boil and then simmer 1 C brown rice in 2¼ C water for 35 minutes
- marinate 2 C cubed tofu in soy sauce, toasted sesame oil, mirin, maple syrup, 3 cloves crushed garlic.
- cube kobocha squash and bake with olive oil, salt, and pepper at 450 for 40 minutes.
- bake tofu at 400 for 30 minutes and then broil for 6 minutes.
- saute slivered almonds with olive oil and salt.
- slice medium head of napa cabbage, ½ red onion, and 5 green onions.
- Mix those together with dressing ( ½ C toasted sesame oil, ¼ C rice vinegar, 1 T lime juice, 1 T soy sauce) by hand. massage dressing into cabbage and onions.
- add rice, wheat berries, squash, almonds, and tofu after they have cooled.
- add more soy sauce to taste.