Surimi imitation crab, yellowfin tuna, shrimp, combined with diced vegetables and homemade mayonnaise, mint.
Crab classic, how presumptuous.
Classic crab is a crustacean with a tough carapace that's difficult to break through especially for little kids. They're like giant bugs that crawl around on the ocean floor. This is a surimi product made from Alaskan pollock, a white fish, smashed to smithereens and got up with egg whites, sugar, wheat starch, various seafood extracts, and a bunch of chemicals. I love it.
But you know what that means, don't you? It means that since it is not real crab, something of a delicacy these days although they're still nothing more than seafloor bugs, and in fact just a plain ol' whitefish, that we might as well go ahead and jazz up our salad with other real seafood items, whatever we happen to have and whatever appeals to us in that moment. Scallops -- no, catfish --no, sea bass --no, flounder --no, salmon -- no. We have those things in frozen form, but no, not today in this salad. Why? Because I said so.
I have two carrots on hand but they're rather thin. I'd prefer to use the Japanese slicer to shred a carrot but thin items are dangerous on that slicer. It's a mandolin type thing and the blade is hazardous especially with hard items. The carrot must be shoved through two blades at once, one to slice it and the other like a sharp comb to shred it. The other option is to drag out a processor and mess that up, unacceptable for a lazy bloke like myself, just for one carrot. So I used the little plastic machine that cranks a vegetable through two blades face on, a regular blade and a sharp comb blade, to produce twirly vegetable shreds. It's fun. The thing is, the machine leaves a core of vegetable about the size of a pencil and my two carrots are nearly that thin, which doesn't leave much to twirl around and shred.
Ha ha ha, bloody wow.
I didn't photograph turning the carrot so I looked at Google images for "japanese turning tool" to show to you the funny little Benriner tool, and the very first photograph that pops up looks awfully familiar. That's my work surface so frequently photographed and shown right here. Then I remembered I already photographed turning a potato or something so I searched this site, up there in the corner ↖ for 'benriner', and immediately saw this photograph, mine indeed, turning a piece of daikon radish for this post about fried rice a long time ago. But now this photograph appears on another site called Bling Cheese which I never heard of. Somebody nicked my photograph, and now Google says, "this photograph may be subject to copyright."
As if.
Should I be mad or well chuffed? Tell me, because I am not in touch with my feelings at all.
Whatever.
My salad doesn't have any olives because I am sadly oliveless. So I used raisins instead. While I was at it, I put craisins in too. Also freshly ground ginger. Shallot, because I have two shallots sitting there and they must be used for something, otherwise, sweet onion or scallion. Red bell pepper because I had one in the crisper beginning to go wrinkly so I used the whole thing. My own mayonnaise made yesterday for a sandwich is quite good, but I debated about using plain lime because of the raw tuna.
Fresh mint because it is there, otherwise cilantro.
This salad is delicious, and I mean it. I ate half the whole bowl in one sitting, which is considerable. The other half must be eaten quickly because the tuna is uncooked, and fish doesn't last long at all, even when it is cooked. That means I must keep on it until it is gone and that suits me just fine.
It could use some chile flakes.
Plus I have delicious chile poblano soup from yesterday which I jazzed up various ways and extended with additional ingredients. I keep thinking of new things to put in it, so I've been living high over here on amazing poblano chile, now Hatch chile, soup and bright cold seafood salad.
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