Purple sushi salad with tofu nuggets

A couple of months back I mentioned some rather good sushi salad I had made.  I decided to make it again because the first go had pickled cabbage made with cardamom seeds.  They tasted so wrong with sushi salad.  But everything else worked.  I then reverted to one of my favourite spices, mustard, and the salad came together perfectly.

Sushi is something we love to make for a light meal.  Occasionally I have mine as a sushi rice salad instead of wrapping the rice in nori.  It gets more vegies into the meal.  This sushi salad is different because it uses pickled purple cabbage which colours the rice and gives the salad quite a zing, and it also has chopped tofu nuggets.

I used to make tofu nuggets for Sylvia when I had more time but now we are able to buy them, which suits my current time-poor lifestyle.  You can use home-made or shop-bought here.  However be aware that the leftover salad tastes great but misses the crunch of freshly baked tofu nuggets. 

It reached 39 C last week in Melbourne with a nasty hot wind.  And it isn't summer yet.  Not for another week!  This might be just the salad to see me through summer is this is a sign of weather to come.

More sushi recipes on Green Gourmet Giraffe:
Snowman sushi (gf, v)
Sushi rice salad (gf, v)
Sushi with broccoli, edamame and pickled carrots (gf, v)
Sushi stack with carrot, tofu omelet and avocado (gf, v)
Sushi with sticky walnuts and edamame (gf, v)
Sushi with vegan salmon pate (gf, v)

Purple sushi salad with tofu nuggets
Feeds 2-3 as a main meal

Seasoned sushi rice - about 1 1/2 cups
Pickled cabbage, including liquids
1/3 Lebanese cucumber, diced
1/4 red capsicum, diced
1/2 avocado, diced
3 tofu nuggets, baked, cooled and diced
1 sheet nori finely sliced, to garnish
Black sesame seeds to serve, if you want to be fancy

Mix all ingredients. 

Pickled cabbage:

1 cup purple cabbage, diced

Pickling liquid:
4 tbsp apple cider vinegar
2 tbsp water
1 tbsp caster sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp mustard seeds
1 crushed garlic clove

Bring all pickling liquid ingredients the the boil in a small saucepan.  Tip hot pickling liquid over cabbage and let cool.

NOTES:
To finely slice the nori I use scissors to cut a sheet into bands of our 5cm and place these on top of each other, then I chop finely with scissors into very thin strips.  I tried it with scissors with zig zag blades which was fun for the top photo.  I never start the pickling liquid early enough - usually I end up putting it in the freezer for 10-15 minutes to bring down the temperature. You can vary the vegetables according to what you have in the house.  You can keep leftovers overnight in the fridge but you lose the nice crunch of the tofu nuggets.  For instructions on cooking sushi rice, go to this sushi recipe.

On the stereo:
I am Sam (soundtrack) - various artists