Sesame Snow Pea Salad

I first made this many years ago, and it had dropped out of my regular repertoire. Happily, I've corrected this oversight this year. It's a simple recipe from Jill Dupleix's 2002 Simple Food. I've long loved Jill's work, and have been happy to see her recipes return to the Sydney Morning Herald's weekly food section Good Living. She has a sense of fun with food, likes it to be healthy, or at least divine if not healthy, which is as it should be. And she writes fun instructions at times.

Sesame Snow Pea Salad

Mangetout (snow peas) are too boring for words when cooked whole. But shred them finely and toss raw in a sweet Asian vinaigrette, and they taste wild. Serve as a salad or side dish, or use as a base for seafood, duck or barbequed quail.

Serves 4

250g  snow peas (mangetout)
2 tsp sesame seeds

Dressing:
1 tsp Logicane Low GI sugar
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp rice wine vinegar, or white wine vinegar
1 tbsp Chinese rice wine, or dry sherry
2 tsp sesame oil

Wash and dry the snow peas, then finely slice lengthwise into matchsticks, using the tip of a sharp knife. This will take some time, but keep going and don't curse me too much. The effect it has on the flavour and texture is too great to give up now.

For the dressing, mix the sugar, soy sauce, wine vinegar, rice wine and sesame oil together. Lightly toss the shredded snow peas in the dressing, draining off any excess.

Arrange the dressed snow peas on a serving plate and sprinkle with the sesame seeds to serve.

Notes
This worked well with barbequed chicken tonight. I've had it with seafood in the past, and that was delicious too.

I used rice wine vinegar, and dry sherry, it was fab.

The left over dressing was great on a chickpea and salad leaf salad.

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