This is a basic Japanese creamy dressing with a few substitutions, all fancied up with a ton of cilantro. If you do the entire recipe it’s going to be gorgeous and it’s just gourmet enough to sneak its way into this cookbook by Yotam Ottolenghi. But you can also just make the dressing and toss it on some steamed, blanched, or boiled green vegetables of your choice – asparagus, kale, spinach, swiss chard, peas, seaweed. Or just use it as a dip with raw carrot sticks, celery sticks, or chunks of red, orange or green peppers. And it also doubles as a salad dressing for any green salad. My tip: make extra. You’ll want it.
Broccoli, Green Bean, Snow Pea and Sweet Sesame Salad
Sauce:
4 tbsp tahini (not such a standard Japanese condiment, but adds the delicious creaminess. Peanut butter or almond butter or cashew butter would also be fine)
2 1/2 tbsp water (because tahini’s rdiculously thick)
1 clove garlic, crushed
1/2 tsp tamari (or soy sauce if that’s all you’ve got)
1/2 tbsp honey
3/4 tbsp cider vinegar (just over 2 tsp)
1 1/2 tbsp mirin (if you don’t have mirin use a tbsp of sake and an extra 1/2 tbsp of honey. Or just a little extra honey, or replace the salt with 1/2 tsp miso for some of that delicious fermented flavour)
pinch of salt (or 1/2 tsp miso)
Vegetables:
3/4 lbs (3 1/2 cups) broccoli, leaves removed, florets and stems separated, and stems cut into long, thin strips the size of green beans (you can also use broccolini or “sprouting purple broccoli”. Keep the broccoli, snow peas, and green beans in different bowls since you need to blanch them separately)
3/4 cups green beans, ends trimmed (frozen is fine if that’s all that’s available, but fresh is better since they’ll have more crunch)
2 cups snow peas, edges trimmed. You can pull off the stringy fibres if you have nothing better to do with your time.
1 tbsp peanut oil (or sesame oil – especially toasted sesame oil)
1 1/2 cups fresh cilantro leaves (you’re supposed to separate the leaves from the stems and leave the leaves whole but I won’t tell if you do a halfhearted job of separating them. I like the crunch of the cilantro stems in the salad anyway)
3 tbsp toasted sesame seeds (why would you use peanut oil above when you’re going to toast sesame seeds here anyway, Mr. Ottolenghi?)
1 tsp nigella seeds (also known as black onion seeds or kalongi. Don’t have them? Don’t worry about it)
Directions
The easy way:
1. This is my favourite instruction: Combine all the sauce ingredients…
2. Blanch all vegetables together in boiling, salted water for 4 minutes. Drain and rinse under cold water. Let dry thoroughly in colander or dry with paper towels. Toss with remaining ingredients and dressing.
The harder, but slightly more informative way that will ensure optimal results:
1. Whisk all the sauce ingredients together in a medium bowl. Add more water to thin it if you don’t want it too thick. Add more honey if you want it sweeter. More salt if you want it saltier. More sarcasm if you don’t feel any stupider…
2. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and add the green beans (3 minutes if they’re really fresh and you like them crunchy, 4 minutes if they’re not so fresh – aka it’s winter in Newfoundland – and 5 if they’re frozen and dead already. You’re may fall somewhere in the middle: home-grown beans frozen from summer = 4 minutes)
3. Use a slotted spoon to remove beans to a colander and rinse under cold water. Let drain while you add the snow peas to the boiling pot of water. They get two minutes in the boiling water, and while they’re boiling you either remove the green beans from the colander to some paper towels lining a bowl (or just paper towel on the counter if you don’t mind wet counters) or you just leave the beans in the colander. Using that same slotted spoon remove the snow peas from the water after 2 minutes and add to the colander. Rinse again under cold water (the advantage of removing the green beans before adding the snow peas to the colander is that you won’t run out of room in the colander, and the beans will have a better chance of drying out more thoroughly. When this salad is soggy it’s significantly less good. You could also skip the water in the sauce if you’re expecting some water to still be clinging to your freshly blanched vegetables. Basically, the longer you can leave them to dry, the better).
4. Now blanch the broccoli the same way for 2 minutes (removing or not removing the snow peas from the colander while you wait). Drain pot into colander and rinse with cold water to stop cooking process and keep bright green colour.
5. Dry all vegetables thoroughly with paper towels (see above for explanation), or don’t. In a large bowl toss all the vegetables with the tbsp of oil and then serve in one of the following ways:
a) Combine three quarters of the cilantro leaves, sesame seeds (toasted = a few minutes in a small, oil-free frying pan over medium heat until they start to brown, shaking the pan occasionally so the seeds don’t burn or brown too unevenly), and nigella with the vegetables in a large bowl and spread on a serving platter (or keep in the bowl, for goodness sakes Mr. Ottolenghi…). Then pour the entire sauce on top and garnish with the rest of the cilantro leaves and seeds. (This seems ridiculous…it’s thick and won’t seep down to the bottom, and then you just have to toss the thing anyway. It’ll be pretty for about 1 minute on the table and then it’ll be sad that the last person served doesn’t get any sauce.)
OR
b) Alternate layers of vegetables in oil on a serving platter (or in a bowl) with sprinklings of the cilantro leaves and seeds. then serve the sauce on the side. This is not good for a family meal. This is a disaster waiting to happen – sauce bowls getting knocked over, family members being impatient. I mean, it’s not gravy. It’s not as though the sauce seeps into the vegetables and disappears and is a waste of calories (my opinion of gravy when heaped on meat or potatoes…). For the love of god, just toss all the ingredients together!!! Sure, the picture above isn’t gorgeous because I did just that, but there was tons of sauce leftover, and if you insist on serving the extra on the side, at least it can be multi-purpose as a crudité dip or green salad dressing. Presentation be damned…Maybe tomorrow I’ll try to make my food prettier, but today I’m hungry. Besides, Mr. Ottolenghi, have you seen your swiss chard cakes with sorrel sauce (parsley sauce, in my case)? It would take an incredible food photographer to make those things pretty. But delicious, yes. They sure are delicious…
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