Tag Archives: Salad

Pickled Salad

14 Tuesday Jan 2020

Posted by in Preserves, Starters, Techniques, Vegan, Vegetable Dishes

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This fresh light salad can be made with many different vegetables depending on the season, I will give you the recipe of exactly what I put in this time, and at the end of the recipe a list of the other vegetables that like this type of marinade. The salad is made in a large glass jar which is put on a sunny windowsill for a couple of days to lightly ferment and tenderise the vegetables. The fermentation also adds to the prebiotic qualities of the vegetables.


50 grams sea salt

20 grams sugar

750 ml water

400 ml cider vinegar

romanesco cauliflower – cut into smallish florets

carrots – peeled and very thinly sliced

radishes – very thinly sliced

Spring onion and garlic – sliced diagonally

mustard seeds

In a large jug, mix the water and vinegar with the salt and sugar. Stir well.

Layer the vegetables in a large jar adding a sprinkling of mustard seeds as seasoning with each set of layers.

Push the layers down to compact the vegetables and then see if you need more layers. Once the vegetables soften they will naturally compact down, so it’s a good idea to firm them down at this stage.

Once the jar is full, add the brine and vinegar, fill to the top of the jar.

Stand the jar in a container to catch any overspill of liquid. You will need to put something in the neck of the jar to weigh down the contents and stop them rising above the liquid. I use a small round plastic container to fit inside the jar neck, and a jar of beans as the weight.

Place the whole contraption on a sunny window sill for 2-3 days to ferment. The vegetables will emit bubbles of gas as they marinade, which will push some of the liquid out over the top of the jar, hence the need to have a container to catch the excess.

Once the bubbling has stopped remove the weight, top up the jar with the overspill liquid and more of the brine mix if necessary. Put the lid on the jar. Wash the outside of the jar.

Leave the salad to continue marinating in the fridge for a couple more days and then it will be ready to eat.

The salad will keep for a couple of weeks, so doesn’t need to be eaten all in one sitting.

Other vegetables that can be used for this salad are: white cabbage, Chinese leaves, red peppers, bean sprouts, cucumber and courgettes, broccoli and white cauliflower. The spice and seasoning can be varied too, I used mustard seeds to complement the cauliflower. Dill is traditional in Eastern Europe, coriander, caraway seeds, fresh herbs, citrus peel. If you want to give the salad a more oriental flavour, then add fresh ginger, lemon grass and chilli….and maybe a splash of Nam Pla. Have a play with flavours and see which ones you like!

Red Winter Salad

03 Friday Jan 2020

Posted by in Food for One, Vegan, Vegetable Dishes

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For this salad hot stock is added as a dressing which blanches/cooks the ingredients and helps combine their flavours. This jewel bright salad has a Christmassy feel for me, with it containing cranberries, pomegranate and apples.

Enough for 4 portions

1/2 a medium sized red cabbage

sea salt and black pepper

250ml unseasoned vegetable stock

1 teaspoon coriander seeds

40 grams dried cranberries

1 pomegranate

1 red apple

2 tablespoons of olive oil

3 tablespoons cider vinegar

Start by slicing the cabbage as finely as you can. If you have a mandolin use that.

Put the cabbage in a large bowl and sprinkle over the salt and pepper. With your hands crush the seasoning into the cabbage breaking it up a little as you go. Leave to soften for half an hour.

Put the coriander seeds in the stock and bring to a boil. Turn off the heat and leave to steep for half an hour.

Once the cabbage and the stock have steeped, continue finishing the salad.

Remove the seeds from the pomegranate and add to the cabbage together with the dried cranberries.

Cut the apple into small slices and add to the salad.

Dress the salad with the oil and vinegar. Mix well.

Bring the stock back to a boil and pour over the salad. Mix well.

The salad is ready to eat, but will taste even better the next day. If you store it in the fridge, get it out early enough to let it come back to room temperature before eating.


Red and green salad with quinoa

13 Friday Dec 2019

Posted by in Food for One, Main Courses, Vegan, Vegetable Dishes

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In this salad there is –

60 ml/1/4 cup quinoa per person boiled for about ten minutes in salted water until done. Drain and run cold water through it to cool.

red oak leaved lettuce

rocket

radishes cut into wedges

cooked beetroot cut into wedges

alfalfa sprouts

green pumpkin seeds

I made a very light dressing of Pedro Jiménez syrup, a slightly sweeter variation on balsamic syrup, and lemon juice.

 

Nicoise Salad

09 Tuesday Sep 2014

Posted by in Fish, Food for One, Main Courses, Starters, Vegetable Dishes

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Composed salads with their mixture of textures, tastes and colours are very close to being perfect food, and a Nicoise Salad is one of the great classics in this category. Its mixture of green leaves and French beans, red tomatoes and peppers, black olives, white and yellow egg and the pinky brown of tuna make it a delight to look at.

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At the market today, my favourite fish stall had some superb fresh tuna, so I decided to sear it fairly rare and have it as part of a Nicoise Salad in place of the usual tinned tuna. Without losing the elements that make a salad a Nicoise, ie Tuna, Egg, French Beans, Tomatoes and Black Olives, there is room for you to make the salad your own. I prefer a poached egg to boiled as I like to mix the runny yolk into the salad. I also like to thin down the mayonnaise with a little water before pouring it over the salad. And I do love Chilli Jam with tuna, so although it is not traditional…..

Thai Green Curry with Seafood & Oriental Salad

26 Monday Aug 2013

Posted by in Fish, Food for One, Main Courses, Sauces, Vegetable Dishes

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THAI GREEN CURRY WITH SEAFOOD

I fell in love with Thai cooking on a visit there many years ago, and took copious notes of everything that I ate. Once home I set about recreating the dishes that I had enjoyed while there. I started by buying in the curry pastes, but now that I grow all the essential ingredients on the farm, I make my own, and I am not sure that I could now go back to the bought ones. The difference is the freshness of the taste, that if you do not over process you can have texture to the paste, and also of course that you can balance the proportions of the ingredients depending on how spicy you require it to be.

For a seafood curry, I like spice, but not overpoweringly so, but I still want a good strong flavour of ginger, garlic and lemon grass, so I put with them a milder pale green chilli which still has spice together with a good pepper flavour.

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For the paste – enough for a curry for 4

4 cloves garlic

2 stalks of lemon grass

A piece of ginger, or galangal if you can get it, roughly 5 cm x 2 cm

2 tablespoons Nam Pla – Thai fish sauce

Roughly chop the garlic and pound to a pulp in a mortar.

Take the outer leaves off the lemon grass and cut off the tough base. Finely slice the tender part at the base, usually you get about 2 cm of tender part.

Add to the garlic.

Scrape the skin off the ginger and grate into the mortar with the garlic and lemon grass. Mash with the pestle until a paste adding the fish sauce as you go along.

This paste can be made in advance and be left developing its flavours in the fridge until needed.

For the fish –

Large peeled prawns

Mussels

White meaty fish like swordfish, shark, monkfish, cod, haddock

1 tablespoon each of red and black fish eggs

A large sweet onion or 5-6 spring onions

Large can of coconut milk

Good bunch of basil leaves or Thai parsley

Olive oil for frying

Peel and slice the onion. In a pan big enough to take the curry, soften the onions in oil.

Add the curry paste and fry for a few minutes.

Add the coconut milk and stir well to mix in. Bring to a simmer and start adding the fish.

Keep the curry on a low heat while the fish cooks to ensure that it doesn’t overcook.

The white fish wants to be cut into chunks. If you think that all the fish requires the same amount of cooking, you can add it all in one go.

The fish shouldn’t need more than five minutes to cook.

Lastly add the fish eggs. I had assumed before putting these in hot dishes that they would melt into the sauce, but they don’t and so add colour and texture to fish dishes. They look particularly effective on Salmon with pasta.

Garnish with the chopped herbs and serve with plain boiled rice.

ORIENTAL SALAD

This is adapted from a recipe in Sri Owens fabulous book of Indonesian recipes. I would not call this a fixed recipe as I use whatever is fresh in the vegetable garden. If I plan ahead enough, I get some beansprouts sprouting a few days in advance. They are not available to buy fresh here in Spain, so you have to grow your own. If you cannot get fresh ones, miss them out rather than use the cooked ones that come in jars, the flavour and texture are just not the same.??????????????????????????????????

A selection of the following –

Fresh bean sprouts

French or Yard Long beans – blanched by pouring boiling water over them, leaving them a minute, and then draining and leaving to cool

Chinese leaves or other greens – finely shredded

The following all cut into fine julienne –

Radishes

Carrots

Small tender courgettes

Green peppers

Red peppers

Plus –

Basil leaves – Thai is best, but the usual or Lettuce Basil will do – shredded

Fresh mint leaves

For the dressing – these amounts are for a salad for 4

100 gms roasted peanuts

1-2 cloves of garlic – finely chopped

1teaspoon crumbled shrimp paste or 1 tablespoon Thai fish sauce

Red chilli – to taste – it wants to be quite spicy – finely chopped

1teaspoon soft brown sugar

Juice of a lime

Salt to taste

Put all the prepared vegetables in a dish with the herbs and mix together.

Prepare the dressing. In a mortar pound all the ingredients except the lime juice until a rough paste with the nuts still having some bigger bits for texture. Add the lime juice and mix. Add just enough water to make into a sauce.

Pour over the salad and mix well. Serve at room temperature.