Smoked Salmon & Cucumber Rice Bowls with Sesame Dressing

Ingredients

• 200 g smoked salmon, roughly torn
• 200 g sushi rice, rinsed
• 1 tbsp rice vinegar
• 1 cucumber, halved, sliced into half-moons
• 1 tsp fresh ginger, grated
• 2 spring onions, green tops only, sliced
• 1 tsp honey
• 1 tbsp sesame oil
• 1 tbsp tamari
• 1 tbsp sesame seeds, toasted
• 0.5 lemon, for squeezing
• pickled ginger, to serve
• edamame, podded, to serve
• miso soup, to serve

Method

1. Rinse the sushi rice until the water runs clear — this washes off the surface starch that turns the bowl gluey. Cook per packet instructions with a pinch of salt, then tip it onto a tray and fan it with a board to cool to just-warm, about 5 minutes. You want it glossy and tender, not steaming hot.
2. Whisk the sesame oil, rice vinegar, tamari, honey and grated ginger in a small bowl until the honey dissolves and the dressing looks unified. Taste it now — the salt comes from the tamari, the lift from the vinegar. Adjust now, not at the table; a few drops more vinegar if it tastes flat, a pinch of salt if the tamari isn't carrying.
3. Toss the cucumber half-moons with a pinch of salt and a splash of rice vinegar. Leave them for 5 minutes — they'll turn translucent at the edges and shed a little liquid, which is exactly what you want. Salted-then-drained cucumber stays crunchy in the bowl instead of weeping into the rice.
4. Divide the warm rice between two bowls. Drape the torn smoked salmon over one side and pile the cucumber on the other, leaving a strip of rice visible down the middle so the dressing has somewhere to pool.
5. Spoon the sesame dressing generously over the salmon and rice — don't be shy, the rice drinks it up. Scatter with the sliced spring onion greens, the toasted sesame seeds, and tuck the pickled ginger alongside. Add a squeeze of lemon over the salmon to cut the richness, and serve with the edamame and a bowl of miso soup alongside.