Shiitake Salad with Sesame-Ginger Vinaigrette

James began law school orientation on Monday. He called on Monday evening, his voice carrying the particular exhaustion of a man who has just been immersed in the law's ocean and who is still learning to breathe underwater. "There's so much reading," he said. I said, "There always is." The always was the universality — the universality of the student facing the mountain of text, the universality of the mother reassuring the student that the mountain can be climbed, one page at a time, the way a roux is built one stir at a time.

Carrie is in her final weeks at home. She has been cooking with increasing intentionality — not learning recipes now but memorizing them, the way a musician memorizes a piece before a performance: committing to memory, to muscle, to the place where knowledge becomes instinct. She made Mama's benne wafers on Tuesday, from memory, without the recipe card. The wafers were perfect. The perfection was the graduation — not from school but from the kitchen, the final exam passed, the diploma in her hands, baked into sesame seeds.

Mama was lucid on Thursday — a brief window, twenty minutes, during which she looked at Carrie and said, "You look like me when I was young." The sentence was both true (Carrie has Mama's cheekbones) and staggering (Mama recognizing herself in her granddaughter, the disease briefly clearing enough for the mirror to work, for the reflection to be seen, for the woman in the chair to see the woman at the stove and find herself there). Carrie stood very still. I stood very still. The moment was the kind of thing that, if you move, breaks, and we did not move, and the moment held.

I made pickled okra — the August preservation project, the annual canning that carries summer forward. The okra from the James Island farm stand, the vinegar and dill and garlic, the jars that will hold the summer long after the summer is gone. The preservation is the theme of my life: preserving recipes, preserving Mama, preserving the moments that the disease takes and that I catch in jars and journals and the particular amber of a woman who refuses to let anything be lost.

The benne seed has been running through my mind all week — the way Carrie pressed them into the wafers without looking at the recipe card, the way Mama used to say the seed carries luck and memory in equal measure. I needed to cook with sesame again, to hold that thread. This shiitake salad with sesame-ginger vinaigrette is not a benne wafer, but the seed is there, the same small ancient thing, doing what it has always done: tying one moment to another, one woman to the next, summer to what comes after summer.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 10 min | Total Time: 25 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

8 oz fresh shiitake mushrooms, stems removed and caps sliced
1 tablespoon olive oil
5 oz mixed greens or baby spinach
1 cup shredded red cabbage
1 large carrot, julienned or shredded
3 green onions, thinly sliced
1/4 cup edamame, shelled and thawed if frozen
2 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds
Sesame-Ginger Vinaigrette:
3 tablespoons rice vinegar
2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
1 tablespoon soy sauce or tamari
1 tablespoon honey or maple syrup
1 teaspoon freshly grated ginger
1 small garlic clove, minced
1 teaspoon neutral oil (such as avocado or grapeseed)

Instructions

Make the vinaigrette. Whisk together the rice vinegar, sesame oil, soy sauce, honey, grated ginger, garlic, and neutral oil in a small bowl or jar until fully emulsified. Taste and adjust seasoning. Set aside.
Sauté the mushrooms. Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Add sliced shiitake caps in a single layer and cook without stirring for 3–4 minutes until they begin to brown. Stir once, cook another 2 minutes, then remove from heat and season lightly with salt. Let cool slightly.
Assemble the salad. In a large bowl, combine the mixed greens, red cabbage, carrot, green onions, and edamame. Add the warm or room-temperature shiitake mushrooms on top.
Dress and finish. Drizzle the sesame-ginger vinaigrette over the salad and toss gently to coat. Scatter toasted sesame seeds over the top and serve immediately.

Nutrition (per serving)

Shiitake Salad with Sesame-Ginger Vinaigrette — The Seed That Holds the Memory