Delectable Lotus Root Salad

When we visit family in Brooklyn for dinner, we often get a chicken dish that comes with Toisan vegetables. Included in those vegetables are lotus root and wood ear mushrooms. So when I found a recipe in Every Grain of Rice for a cold dish that included both of those, as well as other vegetables, it piqued my interest. I definitely wanted to try making it, so the delectable lotus root salad (mei wei ou pian / 美味藕片) got added to the dinner menu.

Ingredients

This dish required us to buy some more new ingredients to stock the pantry (dried shrimp, dried wood ear mushrooms, rice wine vinegar), but since those are all re-usable, the dish cost about $3.

Chopped lotus root, dried shrimp, dried wood ear mushroom, red bell peppers and green onions, sesame oil and rice wine vinegar

- 1 tbsp dried shrimp ($0.60)

- A few crinkly pieces of dried wood ear mushroom ($0.40) *

- 1 section of fresh young lotus root ($1.27)

- 1 tsp finely chopped ginger ($0.05)

- 2.5 tsp clear rice vinegar ($0.20)

- 1 tsp sugar ($0)

- A few small horse-ear slices of red bell pepper ($0.25)

- 1 spring onion, green part only, sliced diagonally ($0.20)

- 1 tsp sesame oil ($0)

- Salt ($0)

* The recipe called for a "few" pieces but I used more like seven. They looked so small in their dried form that I didn't realize just how big they would get. I definitely didn't need to use as much as I did.

Process

This was a really straight-forward and easy dish to make. Most of the work is in the prep.

Step 1:  Soak dried shrimp and wood ear mushrooms in hot water for at least 30 minutes. The shrimp don't get much larger, but the wood ears definitely do.

After soaking in hot water for a few minutes

Mushrooms after about half an hour

Step 2:  Prep all the other ingredients - chop the red bell peppers, chop the spring onions, finely chop the ginger, and peel and thinly chop the lotus root.

Step 3:  Place the lotus root slices in boiling water for a minute or two to blanch them soon after cutting them. Refresh in cold water and drain.

Step 4:  Drain wood ears and shrimp. Cut wood ears into small pieces.

Step 5:  Combine all the ingredients together in a bowl and mix well.

Review

First, let me just say that my dish looks nothing like the one in the cookbook, which had mostly lotus root slices with everything else as accents. I guess I used more wood ears, bell peppers and green onions than she did.

Finished lotus root salad

It was a really fresh and clean dish, a little sour from the rice wine vinegar which was very present in the dish, and crunchy from all the lotus root slices. We thought it was healthy and good, but it wasn't really that exciting. Would we make it again? Maybe, since it's very light and refreshing, and we love lotus root!