I recently had the opportunity to try a delicious recipe from Trufflehead. Since I’m always looking for fun new vegetarian recipes, I chose to try the Sesame Slaw with Pea Pods. When I skimmed the recipe, I was delighted to see one of my favorite health foods was on the ingredients list: DAIKON RADISH! Not to mention bean sprouts and red cabbage.

I gathered everything I needed to get started. I find cooking much more fun if I pretend I’m on camera for the Food Network and have everything in place like a pro does!

This recipe called for prepping the snow peas in a way that I hadn’t done before. First, you remove the strings. Trufflehead provides a great instructional video to show me the best way to do this quickly with a paring knife.

It also called for blanching the snow peas, where you briefly boil them, then plunge them into an ice water bath.

I’ll be honest – in the past, when I have used snow peas I have always eaten the strings and NOT blanched them. Mostly it was a matter of my being lazy and thinking it would take too long. But the video guidance showed me that it’s actually quite quick and simple. And I must admit, the blanching really improved the color and texture of the snow peas! They came out a beautiful green and were perfectly crunchy.

The only prep that remained was chopping the cabbage, grating the daikon and mixing the dressing.

The dressing was delicious. I loved the combination of the orange and tahini together. I’ll definitely make this again to use on salads and maybe even on soba noodles!

I tossed the prepped vegetables in a large bowl with the dressing.

I’d planned on waiting until lunchtime to eat my slaw – but it looked so delicious I had to dig in right away! I plated some and topped it with the toasted sesame seeds.

It was crunchy, colorful and satisfying. I loved the contrast of the purple and green. I think next time I’ll even try black sesame seeds so that they really stand out among all the colors.

The best part was that is still looked and tasted great while I was enjoying the leftovers two days later.

Find more by Shari at www.FitFeat.com and www.ChefShari.com.