Hetty Lui McKinnon's Sesame & Celery Noodle Salad
A vegan reinvention of cold Cantonese jellyfish salad, with slippery glass noodles, fried tofu and crisp celery. Words by Hetty Lui McKinnon. Photos by Emli Bendixen.
Good morning and welcome to Vittles! Today, we are publishing our Big Salad Summer Recipe Supplement, comprising four recipes for main course salads by some of our favourite cooks. Here, Hetty Lui McKinnon offers a vegan version of a favourite cold Cantonese jellyfish salad, with slippery glass noodles, fried tofu and crisp celery. To read the rest of the Summer Recipe Supplement, please click below:
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My mother, the best cook I know, rarely made salads. In Cantonese culture, salads and raw dishes in general are regarded as ‘cold’ foods, which upset the body’s internal balance. The fact that I built a career on salads as a culinary artform might be my ultimate Chinese daughter rebellion.
The one exception was jellyfish salad – a cold dish of slippery, bouncy and crunchy slivers, tossed with celery and chicken, with a sesame oil dressing – which she made for special occasions. I lovingly nicknamed it ‘rubber band salad’. Although the presence of jellyfish suggests a dish that is exotic or daring, it is really the opposite: its flavours are fairly tame, savoury and refreshing, rather than punchy. The most memorable part of the salad was the texture – the pairing of the chewy, crunchy jellyfish with the crisp and fibrous celery. Even today, thirty plus years after giving up all meat and seafood, I can still acutely recall what it felt like in my mouth.
This recipe is my vegan take on that salad, using translucent sweet potato starch noodles – the type used to make Korean japchae – to achieve a same-but-different elastic texture. These noodles fall into a category known as ‘glass noodles’, of which there are various types, from spindly thin mung bean vermicelli, to thicker, springier tapioca noodles. Any glass noodles would work in this recipe, though the thicker, sturdier varieties a are chewier and so will better replicate the mouthfeel of jellyfish I’m trying to replicate. The celery is slightly pickled in the vinegar and sesame oil, just enough to relax it into a more pleasing bite.
Sesame & Celery Noodle Salad
