Just Another Meatless Monday: Try Something New

I thinned the leftover Tahini Lemon sauce/dip from last week with water and used it for salad dressing for the rest of the week. It revived my interest in salads just as the weather was getting cooler and I was growing really tired of the salads I had been eating all summer. I usually dress my salads with just vinegar (red wine vinegar most often, but sometimes balsamic).

I made a trip to H Mart (a large local Asian grocery store) on Friday, mainly to get some miso. But I also checked out their produce department, because they have very good prices on produce I get at the Giant or Harris-Teeter, plus they have more unusual ingredients that I can't get at my usual grocery. When I saw the large, knobby lumps of celery root or celeriac, I got one to try it. They also had some very good looking parsnips. The squash in the picture is a Delicata I picked up at Trader Joe's. Their flyer said that the skin, when cooked, is edible, so I thought I would try that, too.

This afternoon I cut up all three vegetables and roasted them in the oven at 400F. I roasted each separately, just in case they took different amounts of time to cook, but they each took about 15 minutes to get soft, although some browned better than others in that amount of time. The Delicata squash was easy to prepare. I just cut off the stem end, then cut it in half lengthwise and scraped out the seed goop with a spoon, then cut it into half-moons.

I also made a tahini-miso dressing (which is why I was at H Mart for miso). It's based on several recipes I found on the internet, but not exactly like any one of them. Here's what I mixed together in a small bowl for the dressing:

about 2 tablespoons tahini
about 1 tablespoon red miso
juice of  1 orange
juice of 1 lemon
about 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

I used a fork to mix, because both the miso and the tahini needed some mashing and smashing to get the lumps out of the dressing. It turned out thin in consistency, but very tasty. White miso has a more delicate flavor than red miso, so you might want to start with that if you're not sure you like the taste of miso.

I used some of the roasted vegetables in a green salad along with my typical cherry tomatoes, mushrooms, canned artichoke quarter and canned hearts of palm, plus some kidney beans, and dressed it with the tahini-miso dressing. It was just what I needed for an autumn salad dinner. I loved the sweetness of the roasted parsnips, Delicata squash, and celeriac with the tangy dressing.

I had never had celeriac or Delicata squash before, and this was my first purchase of miso, too. Sometimes I need to shake things up and try something new. I'm glad I did. I see many more autumn salads with roasted vegetables in my future.