Roasted Green Beans with Warm Soy Vinagrette

I'm a big fan of the roasting of vegetables lately and wanted to work through some green beans I had in the fridge. I found this recipe in From the Harvest, which seemed like a nice, healthier alternative and give the opportunity to try a new sauce.

I don't have a lot of Asian in the pantry, so I knew I was going to have to buy the seseme seeds, seseme oil and rice vinegar. The Jewel was sold out of dark seseme oil, but had chili seseme oil. I figured that with only a teaspoon in the recipe, the spice wouldn't be overpowering.

Aside from that, the other change to the recipe I made was to oven roast the green beans, rather than "pan roast" them (which sounded like frying to me). I used a ginger and garlic seasoned wok oil for the roasting and low sodium soy sauce for the vinaigrette. I served it with some white rice I had in the frige.

Overall, the results were pretty good. The spice from the chili was just right. It did seem that the vinaigrette needed some type of emulsification. When eating the beans, too many times, it just tasted like soy sauce on beans. But in the rice, where everything blended, it was really nice. Perhaps a light touch of a Chinese mustard would do the trick, binding without messing with the flavor. Also, I could have cut the time on the green beans and pulled them out at 20 minutes. So, with a couple of tweaks, this might be a keeper.