Sesame, Edamame and Pea Shoot Salad

Can you taste spring?

I can and it tastes like this salad. It is light, fresh and filled with green vegetables bursting with flavour.

It may have been snowing this week, but I felt the the need to bring spring back into my cooking.

Unfortunately, my own pea shoots are still too small to harvest, so I went back to T&T to pick up some more pea shoots for an instant boost of spring.

Inspired by Gourmet (June 1994), the base of this salad comes from pea shoots, which are sweet like peas with a nice body from the stems and delicate leaves.  I topped it with fresh sweet sugar snap peas, edamame and carrots and coated it in a subtle sesame dressing. The star of this dish are the veggies, not the dressing.

The thing I love about this salad, though, besides its mouthful of spring, is that it is a very satisfying salad. Deceivingly so, it fills you up.  The edamame really helps to increase the fat and protein levels. While each serving of this salad has only 180 calories, it also boasts 11g of protein, 22g of carbohydrates (7g fiber) and 7g of fat. That is something everyone could use from a salad!

This is my submission to Ivonne at Cream Puffs in Venice for this week’s Magazine Mondays, to Deb for this week’s Souper Sundays, as well as to April in the Raw (substituting some of the toasted elements, and not cooking the edamame).

Sesame, Edamame and Pea Shoot Salad

1 cup shelled frozen edamame

3 cups sugar snap peas, ends trimmed (260g)

1 large carrot, julienned (140g)

1 tablespoon rice vinegar

1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil

1/2 to 1 tablespoon agave nectar (or honey or maple syrup)

2 teaspoons sesame seeds, toasted lightly

2 teaspoons tamari or soy sauce

6 cups pea shoots, washed and roughly chopped (245g)

1. Bring water to a boil in a large skillet. Once boiling, cook edamame for 2-4 minutes, until tender but not mushy. Drain, rinse and set aside.

2. Add trimmed sugar snap peas and carrot to edamame.

3. Create the dressing: Mix together the rice vinegar, toasted sesame oil, agave nectar, sesame seeds and soy sauce.

4. Prior to serving, mix in the pea shoots with the vegetables and toss with the dressing. Serve immediately.

Serves 4.