Kani Salad

Blog's Category: International, My Successes

Kani Salad

Intro

This salad is new on our menu but I have a feeling that it will stay in for a long time. Two main ingredients, crab (imitation) sticks and seaweed salad, are the reason why I love this salad. While salad components are not common, they worth a effort you take on finding them.
First time I have tried this salad at a Russian restaurant and was sold on it immediately - light, "seafood-y", delicious.  Once you find ingredients, it's easy to make and usually quickly becomes everyone's favorite.
Funny name "kani" comes from Japanese "kani" for "crab", so origin of a salad is probably Japanese.

Variations
- Hence the name, crab sticks - a "must" ingredient here. Other ingredients may come and go. I come across such ingredients for this salad as carrot, cucumber, lettuce, mango and so on. The ingredient list below is my preference, it has that minimally necessary components (in my humble opinion :)) which creates perfectly balanced beautiful dish.

Taste Description
Taste is light and refreshing despite mayo presence, nothing heavy. Seaweeds give it abundance of flavor and texture, crabsticks infused with this flavor create body, and tiny specks of fish roe give it unusual and fun, pop-in-a-mouth layer of texture among all other textures here.

How to Serve
Serve cold, on a large serving plate, with a serving chopsticks artistically plunged into a salad. I like to eat this salad with chopsticks as well - somehow it seems more natural for this salad :)

Kani Salad

For a large crowd: 

• 2 packs of cani (imitation crab sticks) - try to find it at Asian market, it will state "kani" or "sushi fish sticks", those can be easily separated into strands.
• large container of Seaweed Salad - I buy it at Costco, it's a "ready-to-eat" salad which is actually delicious on its own. It contains seaweeds, agar-agar, sesame oil and sesame seeds.
• 1-2 cups of Masago fish roe - you will find it in a small containers in a freezer section of any Asian store.
• 1.5 cup of Light Hellmann's mayonnaise (or your choice of mayo)
• 1 tsp Sriracha sauce (optional)

- In a large bowl, separate crab sticks into strands.

- Add seaweed salad, mayonnaise (reserve 1 or 2 tablespoons for decoration) and sriracha sauce. Using two forks or chopsticks, mix salad nicely.

- Add fish roe, reserving small portion of roe for garnishing. Mix lightly.

- For garnishing, in a small bowl, using whisk, stir reserved couple tablespoons of mayonnaise with 2-4 tablespoons of drinking water to get pourable mayonnaise.

- Transfer salad on a plate, garnish with fish roe and drops and spirals of mayonnaise. Enjoy!

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IN PICTURES

It's frozen masago fish row. No need to defrost it. It thaws in a seconds.

I love this stuff... Too bad Costco sells it in a huge containers...otherwise I would buy it more often.

Childs labor is encouraged here (especially if child loves the final product ;)

Mayo diluted with water is my trick to use less mayo in a salads in general and also it makes great pourable consistency for a final decorating strokes.

What a color, ha?!