Warm Vegetable Salad with Sesame-Maple Dressing

This salad, made of a colourful medley of vegetables served on wilted spinach, has the potential to be fantastic. Unfortunately, made as per the recipe, it didn’t quite get there: the plate was very brightly coloured but the flavour just didn’t have the zing to match.

The instructions for steaming the vegetables in stages, starting with the ones that take the longest to cook and finishing with the peppers and zucchini, worked well, resulting in tender-crisp veg.

The problem was the dressing, a vinaigrette described as east-meets-west. Sesame oil was the only ingredient that was "eastern” and I quite enjoyed it….you could taste it but it wasn’t overwhelming. The dressing, however, was too sweet, and added to a plate of vegetables that was quite sweet, that sweetness became the overwhelming flavour of the salad. I fixed it by adding more of the red wine vinegar, but less maple syrup at the start would have been better.

This recipe is definitely worth fixing and making again as you could use whatever vegetables you have on hand and it takes care of the need for a vegetable side and salad with 1 dish.