Sesame-Dressed Spinach Salad

Spinach is used extensively in Japanese, Chinese and Indonesian cooking. I have often enjoyed this spinach salad in Japanese restaurants in Southeast Asia, and I was pleased to learn how simple it is to make. In Japan, spinach is picked when it is still quite a small plant; this assures a sweet and tender leaf. The essential technique is to blanch the spinach quickly, plunge it into cold water (to stop the cooking and to preserve the deep colour) and to squeeze out all excess liquid. The sp