No-Fuss Rocket Salad with Smoked Salmon

Think hostel living means you have to resort to eating those dehydrated noodles out of a styrofoam cup? Reconsider.

This no-fuss salad was inspired by my recent visit to The Sydney Seafood Market. If you ever find yourself in this amazing city, do pay the market a visit. You won’t be disappointed.

I’ve been lucky to have done a lot of travelling in my life and somehow, I’ve avoided the whole hostel experience. However, I’m spending the next three months trekking across Eastern Australia and South East Asia. Therefore, I will need to be little more thrifty to stretch my coin. This means partly embracing the hostel life.

The idea of staying in hostels has always seemed ~~Godawful~~ less than ideal.

Bedbugs, dirty showers and drunk youths comes to mind. There’s even a series of horror movies titled, Hostel. But with a little time spent researching and reading traveller reviews, I found many options for the reluctant hostel goer.

Our hostel in Sydney was only a 5 minute walk from Darling Harbour and other attractions such as Sydney’s famous Seafood Market and Seafood Cooking School.

Docks at The Sydney Seafood Market

While the hostel was above a pub that ungracefully unloaded their empty kegs at 6am every morning, it did force us to seize the day! This meant we avoided some of the crowds. Most importantly, our room and the shared kitchen was clean (although I still wore my flip flops everywhere including the shower room).

During our short stay in Sydney, we explored the Harbour, the Zoo, Manly beach and of course the Sydney Seafood Market.

Manly Beach in Sydney

The seafood market is open 7 days a week and if you arrive early enough, you can experience the hustle and bustle as the workers unload the goods from the fishing boats and docks.

Eagerly, we arrived around 7am before bus loads of tourists arrived.

Sydney Rock Oysters

What really struck me was the wide selection of local seafood available. Species of beautiful fish I had never seen or heard of totally dominated the iced displays. And while there was still the familiar king crab imported from the US, it was good to see that it was outnumbered when considering the carbon footprint.

Some of the many fresh, local options

If you are interested in visiting the Sydney Seafood Market, please note that the market also offers guided tours for an intimate, behind the scene experience. Call ahead to book as it is only available a few days of the week. Tours start at 6:30am for around $25 per person.

Sydney’s Famous Rock Oysters

If you want to test out your culinary skills, various cooking classes are offered at the Seafood School of Sydney, but they do come with a hefty price (around $90 to $165 AU for a couple hours).

Want a free class? If you arrange for a group to attend a lesson, you can get a fifth member for free! Get coordinating…

If you are a sushi or sashimi lover, you can get prime sushi-grade fish for a small price. I bought around a dozen and a half pieces of freshly sliced salmon sashimi for less than 4 AU dollars.

My salmon sashimi order

So as much as those MSG seasoned noodles may be a guilty pleasure of yours, or a cheap way to eat, that thing called nutrition is a tad bit important in the end. Whether you are on the road, or just looking for something simple, give this no-fuss salad a go.

Created in this wee hostel kitchen

From the land down-under, thanks for reading!