Plateau de Crudités
A crudités platter is a large dish of raw vegetables, which can be left whole or sliced, diced and cut for your guests. They can also be spectacular. I love these dishes as there is something very festive about them with everyone choosing their favorite morsels. This is a lovely way to start a meal for a crowd, plus you can ask the extra hands to help prepare all the ingredients. There’s no right or wrong way to do this so have fun laying them out on a board or tray. I like to serve this with a good mustard vinaigrette and perhaps some hummus alongside.
Plateau de Crudités
Ingredients
- 1 cauliflower, florets separated
- 3 Persian cucumbers, cut into thin slices
- Assorted radishes, some very thinly sliced, some quartered
- 1 head celery, cut into thin sticks
- 1 pound assorted multicolored carrots, peeled and thinly sliced in lengths
- 4 Baby Gem lettuces, quartered
- 1 pound cherry tomatoes
- 1 pound asparagus, stems trimmed
- ½ pound snap peas, ends trimmed, sliced on a bias
- ½ pound green beans, steamed to just barely cooked
- 1 large zucchini, peeled into strips, each strip rolled up to form a cylinder
- 2 yellow/baby squash, peeled into strips, each strip rolled up to form a cylinder
Vinaigrette
- 1 tablespoon nut mustard, or Dijon mustard
- ¼ cup olive oil
- Zest and juice of 1 lemon
- 1 tablespoon pear champagne vinegar, or white wine vinegar
- 1 pinch coarse sea salt
- 6 grinds black pepper
Instructions
- Arrange the vegetables in an attractive pattern on a large platter or tray. I usually start with the largest vegetables first and form a diagonal line across the platter, tucking in the other vegetables around the central line and working out towards the edge of the plate. Serve with the mustard vinaigrette.
For the Vinaigrette
- In a small bowl, whisk together the vinaigrette ingredients to form a smooth emulsion.
Nutrition
Pascale Beale
Chef, teacher and food writer, Pascale Beale, owner of Pascale’s Kitchen, grew up in an eccentric European family who cherish food, wine and the arts. She is the author of 10 Mediterranean-style cookbooks, including the best sellers Salade and Salade II. Her food memoir, 9’ x 12’: Adventures in a Small Kitchen, a multi-media book, is hosted on Substack. Her latest cookbook is Flavour: Savouring the Seasons.
