Recipe for Ramen Salad with Sesame Dressing by Tim Anderson

‘I have a fairly problematic noodle addiction – in all honesty, it’s hard for me to go more than a day or two without consuming some variety of noodle’, confesses Tim Anderson, author of JapanEasy, a recipe book in which he seeks to debunk the idea that Japanese cuisine is particularly difficult to reproduce at home. 

The chef is careful to create recipes with ingredients that are easy to find in a supermarket, with a common base of seven ingredients: soy sauce, rice vinegar, mirin, sake, miso, dashi, and rice. Here, he proposes a recipe for a salad made with ramen (wheat noodles), accompanied by vegetables or, if desired, ham, chicken, or tofu. 

Tim Anderson is an American chef who won the 2011 series of MasterChef UK. Having graduated in 2006 from Occidental College in Los Angeles, where he studied the history of Japanese cuisine, he then lived in Japan for two years, in Fukuoka. He now lives in London, where he runs two Japanese restaurants: Nanban Brixton and Nanban Central. 

Serves 4

Difficulty: sincerely not difficult

Method

100 g mixed salad leaves (try to get a mix of peppery/mild and crunchy/tender – I like pea shoots and rocket)

1/2 cucumber, julienned

100 g cherry tomatoes, cut into quarters

80 g radishes, thinly sliced

250 ml sesame dressing, thinned with a little water and salt or soy sauce 

4 portions ramen noodles, cooked al dente and rinsed under cold water

4 hard-boiled or soy-marinated eggs, halved

4 slices ham or 2 cooked chicken breasts, or 300-400 g smoked or marinated tofu, sliced

Method

Toss the leaves, cucumber, tomatoes, and radishes together. Mix the sesame sauce into the ramen and portion into wide bowls.

Garnish with the salad and eggs.

Add protein sources if desired to serve as a meal for dinner rather than lunch.

JapanEasy (2017), by Tim Anderson is published by Hardie Grant.