12 minutes · no cook
Pickled Shiitake Salad with Bitter Leaves
Bitter leaves, walnut, parmesan, and shiitake.
- Time
- 12 minutes
- Serves
- 4
- The jar
- Pickled Shiitake
- Ferment
- 28 days
Ingredients
- 1 jar Pickled Shiitake
- 1 head radicchio, torn
- 1 bunch frisée or escarole
- 50g toasted walnuts
- 30g parmesan shavings
- 1 tbsp shiitake brine + 2 tbsp olive oil
Method
- Whisk brine, olive oil, and a crack of pepper.
- Toss bitter leaves with the dressing until just coated.
- Pile onto a wide platter rather than bowls, let it breathe.
- Scatter shiitake, walnuts, and parmesan.
- Serve immediately, the leaves wilt faster than you'd think.
Why this jar
Radicchio and frisée are bitter, and bitter needs something savoury underneath it or the salad is just sharp. Shiitake is the only jar we make that goes properly savoury — 28 days of long, low ferment concentrating the mushroom's own glutamates, then tamari on top of that. It is closer to a preserve than a pickle.
Which is why the dressing is a tablespoon of the brine rather than a vinaigrette. Oak-aged vinegar and tamari are already a finished dressing; adding lemon or mustard just buries what you paid for. Oil and pepper is the whole recipe.
Contains soy
Shiitake is the one jar in the range built on tamari, so this salad is not soy-free. King oyster is the closest substitute at the savoury end without it — white balsamic and truffle oil instead, richer and less umami, and you would want to cut the olive oil back since that jar brings its own.
Dress it late
Bitter leaves collapse faster than sturdy ones. Radicchio dressed and left for ten minutes is a different, sadder salad. Whisk the dressing first, tear the leaves, and only bring the two together when people are already at the table.
What to do with the rest of the jar
Shiitake is the one jar we would genuinely cook with, because the flavour survives contact with other things. Chopped into ramen or a broth it works as a seasoning, brine included. Good stirred through rice, or folded into scrambled eggs off the heat.
A spoonful of the liquid will do more for a pan sauce than an equivalent spoon of soy, because it brings acid as well as salt. See the shiitake page for what the 28 days actually build.