Potato Salad with Japanese Mayo and Pine Nuts

This is one of my new creation and I eat this as a light meal on my meatless day or serve as a side salad with burgers.  As I found that having a potato salad with just potato is too plain, by adding some greens into it adds more fibre and the pine nuts simply is a nice garnish with a bit of a crunch.  I choose to use Japanese Mayonnaise because it has a full flavour of whole egg, bears in mind though it has 80% of fat so don't over dressing it as I know it is hard not to!  My sister fed her fussy 2 years old with this salad and she just sat quietly and ate them all.

Potato Salad with Japanese Mayo and Pine Nuts

4-5 baby potatoes
a bowl of leafy mix (fancy lettuce, baby spinach leaves, rockets and beetroot leaves)
a small handful of pine nuts, toasted
Japanese Mayonnaise
salt and coarse black pepper to taste

Method:

1. Peel the skin of the potatoes (you can leave the skin if you wish) and cut into cubes.  Cook the potatoes cubes into boiling water until cooked.  If you can poke a fork into the cubes, it is ready.
2. Drain the water and leave the potatoes cool.  Rinse the leafy mix with water and drain as well.
3. Put the leafy mix and potatoes into a big bowl.  Add the pine nuts and mayo.  Seasoned with salt and coarse black pepper before serving.  Enjoy!

Thai Style King Crab Salad

One year we went to Japan, our tour guide helped us to order some snow crab from Hokkaido express down to Tokyo.  We had watched many travel shows talking about how tasty the crab was so we didn't want to miss the chance while we were in Japan.  The crab was cooked and came with a pair of scissor to help cutting the shell.  It was one of the unforgettable moment we had in our trip.

I'd seen live Australian king crab in some Asian restaurants or in the aquarium but I'd never tasted it.  
The first time I saw it selling at Coles, I was wondering it would taste as good as the snow crab as both of them live in the cold region.  This crab salad hadn't disappointed us, the meat was not as strong as the mud crab but had more flavour than sand crab, it's flaky and sweet.  I like to serve mud crab as a hot dish and king crab is better to serve cold.

The importance of cooking Thai food is to balance the sweet and sour flavour, I do not have an exact measurement for this recipe as it's all up to your taste buds to tell you what to put in.

Thai Style King Crab Salad

King Crab claws (cooked)
cucumber
onion
chilli
coriander
mint
lime
salt & pepper
fish sauce

Method:
Remove crab meat from the shell.  Finely cut cucumber and onion, marinate with salt, then rinse and drain.  Squeeze out juice and add to the crab meat.  Add the chopped up the coriander, mint and chilli, seasoned with fish sauce, pepper, lime juice and sugar.  Serve cold.