“This salad is good! You could share this with the world!” my son announced over dinner the other night. So, how could I not share it with you?
This is a salad that I serve with every meal, taking advantage of all of summer’s beautiful, bright colours. I love to add purple basil, small leaves of the rainbow chard, deep green mint leaves – whatever catches my eye in the garden. Sometimes I saute green beans with the zucchini or grate the raw zucchini into strips instead of cooking. Another wonderful addition is pumpkin or sweet potato chopped in small cubes, lightly sprinkled with ground cumin, a pinch of cayenne pepper, salt and pepper, then roasted on a baking tray until the pumpkin is tender, and added to the salad.
summer salad
ingredients
3 cups garden greens and edible flowers (lettuce, baby kale, arugula, spinach, chard, beetroot leaves, basil, mint, parsley, coriander)
1 carrot, shaved with a potato peeler
1 cucumber, chopped
½ cup sprouts (see how-to sprout own)
4 small garden zucchinis, halved & quartered lengthwise
dressing
⅓ cup pine nuts
1 Tbsp honey (add a little hot water to make it more liquid)
2 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
5 Tbsp olive oil
juice of one lemon
salt and pepper
preparation
1. In a very hot skillet, drizzle a little oil/ghee and add the halved zucchini; cook until a little charred on all sides. Put aside to cool.
2. Wash, spin and dry the green salad leaves; shave the carrot into long strips, slice the cucumber, add the sprouts and cooled zucchini in a large salad bowl.
3. Lightly dry toast the pine nuts until lightly golden. Put aside 2 tablespoons and roughly chop.
4. Place the rest of the pine nuts with the remaining dressing ingredients in a blender and blend for 1 minute, scraping the sides as needed.
5. Drizzle over the salad, lightly toss, sprinkle with the reserved chopped pine nuts and serve.
Shared goodness from Stacey
