Description: Root vegetable salad. Typical combination of burdock and carrots, but at the same time, it is an amazing combination with tuna-mayo. This can be an appetizer, izakaya-style dish or side dish.
Serves: 2
Cooking time: 10 minutes

Ingredients

• Burdock – chopped into thin strips, 100g
• Carrot – chopped into thin strips, 50g (You may use more carrot according to your preference)
• Tuna tin – half tin, 55g
• Mayonnaise – ½ tablespoon
• Ground black pepper – ¼ dash
• Sesame seeds – ½ teaspoon

Method

1. Peel the skin of the burdock and soak it in water for a few minutes. 
2. Steam the burdock and carrots (you may steam burdock first and carrots separately as the burdock takes more time to be cooked). Meanwhile, mix tuna, mayonnaise and black pepper in a small bowl.
3. Once they are cooked, pat them dry, mix them with tuna-mayo seasonings and serve. Top it up with sesame seeds.

Nutritional Values Per Serving

Kcal	Protein	Fat	Carbs	Fibre	Sugars	Salt	Saturated Fat	Vitamin B12	Vitamin E
125.2	8.5g	5.3g	11.3g	2.4g	2.7g	0.4g	0.8g	0.6μg	1.1mg
6.3%	16.9%	7.6%	4.3%	8.1%	3.0%	6.3%	4.1%	40.6%	36.8%

Nutritional Tips

When most people hear the combination of burdock and carrot, they would imagine kinpira gobo (one of the common Japanese side dishes). This recipe uses the same ingredients but different tastes. This dish is fairly healthy and balanced as it contains some carbs, protein, and low fat and is a good source of fibre. 

Mayonnaise in general is fatty, but adding a bit to the dish is not going to ruin your diet. Alternatively, there are some mayonnaises with half calories, so you may try one of these ones if you are concerned about the fat content and calories.

Carrot is one of the root vegetables and rich in Vitamin A. Vitamin A is one of the essential vitamins to our body. It is fat-soluble and required for healthy vision, growth and cellular differentiation. Deficiency of vitamin A could lead not only to blindness (especially in developing countries aged 1-6 years), but also impaired immune functions causing an increased mortality due to childhood diseases such as measles. In general, adults store vitamin A in their liver so that they can survive in case of food shortage. On the other hand, the excess intake may lead to a higher risk of birth defects such as cleft palate (口蓋裂).

Therefore, women of reproductive age should be careful and advised not to take vitamin supplements which contain vitamin A. Also, it can damage the liver and bones, and lead to hair loss, double vision, vomiting and headaches. It is important to make sure your daily intake of food and supplements doesn’t exceed 1.5mg (https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vitamins-and-minerals/vitamin-a/).