Asian Spinach salad with sesame ginger dressing.
Spinach is also called Parrot food in one of the traditional Chinese medicine book since it has green body and red mouth. The name is really lovely.Spinach is used in stir-fried dishes and soup dishes such as tofu soup with spinach. Besides, I love to use spinach to make cold dishes due to its green color and good absorption of marinades. It is quite a pleasure no matter from taste or vision. This dish introduced today is named as Spinach in ginger sesame sauce(姜汁菠菜), which is a quite common and popular dish in China.
Then we firstly come to the ginger sauce.
Ginger sauce is a common Chinese salad dressing, using boiling water to disperse the minced ginger, and then add soy sauce, salt, vinegar, chicken essence to make the sauce. The spicy taste comes from the ginger. Comparing with the straight spicy of pepper, the spicy of ginger is more reserved. Ginger sauce is mainly used in cold dishes such as long green beans in ginger sauce(姜汁豇豆)，and lotus root in ginger sauce(姜汁莲藕).
The time for rinsing spinach in boiling water should be short to keep the original green color. And sesame oil should be added into rinsing water to keep the green color.
Usually it calls for wolfberry. But my husband hates it, so I replace wolfberry with carrots. The spinach sold on the market is mainly with large root; however spinach with small root is more fitful for this dish.
Sesame Ginger Dressing Spinach
Ingredients
- 1 pound fresh spinach
- 1 teaspoon wolf berry , or carrots
- 1/2 tablespoon sesame seeds
- 1 tablespoon chopped spring onion
Salad dressing
- 1 inch root ginger minced
- 2 tablespoons boiled water , or stock
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce
- 2 teaspoons salt
- 1 tablespoon sesame oil
- 2 teaspoons vinegar
Instructions
- Mince the ginger carefully and pour 2 tablespoons boiled water to soak the ginger for around 20 minutes. And then add other ingredients for dressing sauce. Mix well and set aside.
- Add some drops of sesame oil in water within a pot. And bring the water to a boiling.
- Wash the spinach and rinse in boiling water for 30 seconds along with the wolfberry or carrots. Transfer out and squeeze the water out.
- In a large bowl, mix the blended spinach and carrots with the salad dressing, sesame seeds and chopped spring onion.
- Serve or place all the content to a small bowl. back off the small bowl on the plate to shape the tower.
Nutrition
Hi,
I am not sure what I did wrong, I tried to follow the recipe exactly, but the spinach came out very salty. The underlying flavor was very good but the salt was overpowering. Should I have added 1/2 teaspoon salt instead of 2 teaspoons? Or should the salt go in the boiling water not in the salad dressing? Your recipes are always wonderful so I’m sure the problem was on my end.
Thanks!
Sid
I really like this dish. And yes, as Sid pointed out I’m surprised about the amount of salt, too. I tend to use a lot less.