Roasted Snap Pea Salad with Yakult-Style Dressing

Roasted Snap Pea Salad with Yakult-Style Dressing

Scott Clark

Here’s a dish that my daughter Frost and I call our Inner Smile Salad. It’s everything you want for a cookout. It’s super easy, so you can make it ahead and bring it in a Tupperware. Or you can prop a cast-iron pan on the beach flames and make it right there and then. After a hot fire, lots of sun and piles of grilled meat, it’s a hydrating, cooling, creamy, green gift that’s fun to eat, with a mix of savory elements tucked amid the sweetness that Frost loves. We hammer bowls of it. The dressing is my knockoff of a Japanese probiotic milk drink called Yakult. It’s fermented with a different strain of bacteria than yogurt, and that’s where it gets its citrusy tang.

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Course Salad

Servings 2 -3 servings

Ingredients

For the Yakult-Style Dressing

½ cup yogurt, preferably homemade
1 tablespoon honey
2 teaspoons fresh lime juice
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice, preferably Meyer

For the Roasted Snap Pea Salad

1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
12 ounces sugar snap peas, stems and fibrous ribs removed
¾ teaspoon kosher salt
3 Persian cucumbers
½ bunch fresh chives, cut crosswise into thirds
1 teaspoon toasted white sesame seeds
1 teaspoon black sesame seeds

Instructions

For the Yakult-Style Dressing

In a small bowl, mix all the ingredients until fully combined. It keeps in the fridge in an airtight container, for up to 1 week.

For the Roasted Snap Pea Salad

In a 9-inch cast iron pan over high heat, get the sesame oil ripping hot and smoking.
Drop in the peas and cook them without moving them until one side gets good and charred, 3–5 minutes. When they’re hissing at you and barely wanting to stay inside the pan, give the peas a push. Some will turn over. Add the salt and continue cooking the peas for 3-4 minutes more. You want them unevenly charred. Put the peas on a sheet pan and stow them in the fridge or pop them in a cooler to get nice and cold, about 15 minutes.
Remove the tops and bottoms of your cukes. Holding your knife at a 45° angle, cut a chunk of cuke. Roll the cuke 180° and cut again to get weird, triangular pieces. Repeat with all the cukes, then smash all the pieces with the side of your blade. They’ll hold together because their shape gives them maximum skin. Add the cukes and chilled snap peas to a serving bowl.
Add enough dressing to the serving bowl to heavily coat the veg and mix well. Toss in the chives and all the sesame seeds and serve.