Name: Greens With Magical Sesame Salt
Total time: 15 minutes
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients: ¼ cup toasted sesame seeds; ½ tsp. sugar; ¼ tsp. Diamond Crystal or Morton kosher salt, plus more; 3–4 (lightly packed) cups room-temperature cooked leafy greens (such as water spinach, Tuscan kale, collard greens, or Swiss chard with stems); 2 tsp. (or more) fish sauce or soy sauce; 1–2 limes, halved

Cooked leafy greens covered with sesame seeds served on a white platter next to a mortar and pestle filled with sesame...

Photograph by Isa Zapata, food styling by Thu Buser, prop styling by JoJo Li

Sprinkle muô`i mè, a Vietnamese ground sesame seed salt, over your vegetables and watch them disappear. The three-ingredient mix (Nguyen’s take includes a touch of sugar for balance) instantly transforms the mundane into something special. If the toasted sesame seeds taste dull, revive them in a small pan over a medium-low heat until you can smell their nutty aroma (taste black seeds for nuttiness), about 2–3 minutes. Briefly cool before using. And a cheeky shopping tip from Nguyen herself: “I shop for the biggest, shiny-ish, smooth-skinned limes possible. They have thin skins and the most juice. My husband doesn’t have much hair on his head so we joke that the best limes are bald looking ones!” News you can use.

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What you’ll need

Small Skillet
$25 At Amazon
Mortar and Pestle
$30 At Amazon
Large Bowl
$23 At Amazon
Mini Tongs
$20 At Williams-Sonoma

Recipe information

Total Time
15 minutes
Yield
4 servings

Ingredients

¼ cup toasted sesame seeds

½ tsp. sugar

¼ tsp. Diamond Crystal or Morton kosher salt, plus more

3–4 (lightly packed) cups room-temperature cooked leafy greens (such as water spinach, Tuscan kale, collard greens, or Swiss chard with stems)

2 tsp. (or more) fish sauce or soy sauce

1–2 limes, halved

Preparation

Step 1
If ¼ cup toasted sesame seeds don’t look or smell very toasted, heat in a dry small skillet over medium-low until nutty-smelling (taste if using black sesame seeds), 2–3 minutes. Place sesame seeds, ½ tsp. sugar, and ¼ tsp. Diamond Crystal or Morton kosher salt in a mortar and pestle and pound until fragrant and finely textured. (Or use a mini processor if you don’t have a mortar and pestle.)
Step 2
Combine 3–4 (lightly packed) cups room-temperature cooked leafy greens (such as water spinach, Tuscan kale, collard greens, or Swiss chard with stems) and 2 tsp. fish sauce or soy sauce in a large bowl and toss to work fish sauce into greens. Squeeze juice from 1 lime half over and toss again to coat. Taste and add more fish sauce, salt, and/or lime juice if needed.
Step 3
Sprinkle sesame seed mixture over greens a little at a time, tossing and working in with your hands to coat well. Add sesame mixture until greens taste rich and nutty (you may need most if not all of it). Transfer greens to a platter to serve.

The cover of the cookbook Ever-Green Vietnamese by Andrea Nguyen

Recipes adapted from ‘Ever-Green Vietnamese: Super-Fresh Recipes, Starring Plants from Land and Sea,’ by Andrea Nguyen. Published April 25, 2023 by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of The Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.

Buy it at Amazon or Bookshop