If I had to choose one favorite everyday meal, my choice would be salad. And by salad I don’t, obviously, mean lame cucumber-tomato salads. I simply love nutritious, filling and colourful salads, and I need to get them frequently, at least once or twice a week.
I love everything about these proper, filling salads: they’re super easy to make, nutritious, versatile, and delicious of course. If you ask me, a proper salad should have something warm, something roasted, something fresh (a lot of this, to be precise), something salty, something crunchy, something zesty and something sweet. Something for all kinds of tastes and sensations. So simple and so nutritious, too!
Then we get to seeds. They’re a crucial part of salads, as well! I do love nuts too, but might even prefer seeds: those small tasty things are packed with nutrients of many kind – good fats, vitamins, antioxidants and minerals, and are often an affordable addition to any meal. Seeds, as well as nuts, are a great addition to almost anyone’s diet, as they’ve many health benefits.
This recipe was developed for GoGreen Finland, and as they have many seeds in their assortment I ended up using three different kind of seeds: peeled hemp seeds, pumpkin seeds and sesame seeds – very good. In addition to these I also used quinoa and red lentils, to have something warm and filling in the salad. So good, and ah so nutritious!
Please don’t let the long list of ingredients put you off: the salad is actually really easy to prepare. At the same time when you’re boiling quinoa and lentils, the root vegetables will be baking in the oven, and you can prepare the rest of the salad.
Easy, and oh so good – it’s a promise!
Tuulia xx
Delicious Winter Salad (With a Little Bit of Everything)
serves three – four
about 150 g kale
1 dl quinoa
1 dl red lentils (soaked and well rinsed)
1 medium parsnip
1 medium beetroot
1 small sweet potato
about 100g of small capers
large handful of sesame seeds
large handful of peeled hemp seeds
large handful of pumpkin seeds
1 large pomegranate
fresh basil
about 0.5 dl nutritional yeast
sauce + spices:
1/2 lemon
a lot of quality virgin olive oil
salt
fresh chili, to taste
plenty of cumin
virgin coconut oil
1. Heat the oven to 200 degrees. Rinse the quinoa well, as well as soaked (preferably over night) lentils. Cook the quinoa according to the package instructions, and put the lentils to another pan. Add water so that it barely covers the lentils, and boil. Thanks to soaking, the need for water (and cooking time) is shorter. (And they’re easier to digest, too!)
2. Wash the parsnip well and peel the sweet potato and beetroot. Put onto an oven tray, and add salt and cumin (a lot), some fresh chili and sprinkle melted coconut oil on top. Bake for about 20 minutes, or until the root veggies are ready.
3. Chop the kale (remove the hard middle part) to small pieces. Put into a salad bowl, and pour virgin olive oil on top. Rub the oil onto the kale pieces, until the kale softens a bit. Add the seeds, capers, nutritional yeast, salt, and chopped basil. Pour lemon juice to the bowl as well, and a bit more virgin olive oil. Check the taste and add salt if needed.
4. When the lentils are cooked pour the extra water out. Mix them with the quinoa, when it is ready. Add salt and virgin olive oil.
5. Peel the pomegranate. When the root veggies are done, you’re almost ready: just add the kale salad to the plates first, add quinoa / lentils on top. On top of these add the root veggies and decorate with even more seeds and pomegranate seeds. Maybe a bit more of nutritional yeast flakes, and you’re ready: the most delicious salad is all yours to enjoy!
In co-operation with GoGreen.