Fresh Broccoli Salad, Part 2: Electric Bugaloo

I wrote about Alton Brown's Fresh Broccoli Salad in August of last year. I'm just only now getting around to making it again. Who knows why. We really liked it the first time. I guess I must have just forgotten about it. Now that the weather is getting nicer, we've moved from soups to salads as a big part of our dinners.

This time I used toasted hazelnuts instead of pecans. I liked the hazelnuts better than the pecans. Of course that is probably because aside from my husband and daughter, hazelnuts are my favorite nut!

I still thought the dressing was overly acidic, even though I used a heaping Tablespoon of Dijon mustard instead of 2 teaspoons. Maybe I need to use a different vinegar, balsamic or red wine perhaps? I may also try honey mustard instead of Dijon mustard. It could be that the dressing needs more sweetness to balance the acid from the vinegar and lemon.

While eating the leftovers, I got to thinking about the sweetness of this dish. I wondered if adding craisins would do the trick. I still think the dressing needs to be sweeter because the acidity seemed to increase the tartness of the dried cranberries. While craisins are tart, they are mostly sweet, but in this dish I could barely taste their sweetness.

Don't get me wrong, the salad is good, delicious in fact, but it still needs a slight tweaking in my opinion. I must add that my mom and husband both thought this dish was fine as is. That was most likely due to the fact that they actually ate the tomatoes in the dish. The grape/cherry tomatoes do their job in providing the necessary sweetness. Since I'd rather not eat raw tomatoes, I need to find something else to balance the flavor of the salad.