This salad sounds insanely busy in a very unfashionable way doesn’t it? I believe it’s in vogue these days to go minimal. Short lists of ingredients. Simple. So I’m off trend once again. Never-mind, the salad was rather lovely with big fat sausages.
Ingredients
1 cup – 1 mug of quinoa (depending on how many you’re feeding)
1 large or 2 medium sweet potatoes cut into small cubes
1 large aubergine chopped into small cubes and generously salted
Fry the sweet potato and aubergine cubes in a little butter (or ghee or coconut oil) until really soft and caramalised. I think it took about 30 minutes. Meanwhile cook and drain the quinoa. Mix everything together and dress.
This is a great Friday night supper on a number of levels. For a start it’s roast chicken – always a winner , smells great while it’s cooking and as easy as putting the chicken in the oven to roast. You can get a bit flash with sticking things in the cavity (lemon / garlic / herbs etc) but if you can’t be bothered I reckon even just slamming the bird on a tray in the oven with a bit of salt and pepper still gets a fine result.
You can make the salad in advance so that when the pre-dinner slump hits and all you can think about is a large glass of wine then you can kick back with your large glass of wine, put the TV on for the kiddos and smell the chicken roasting. Sweet. Also, all that raw veg in the salad is super-healthy so you can treat yourself to an extra wine safe in the knowledge your brightly coloured vegetables are busy de-toxing your liver for you while you drink it.
To make the salad, grate up whatever vegetables are to hand. I used my lovely swirly grating machine (which for those of you feeling like your life is incomplete without one (I did get that comment this week so I know the sentiment is out there!) is a Tefal fresh express – got it from Moore Wilsons for about $90 I think. I used courgette, carrot, beetroot and celery – also put some grapes in because I wanted to crumble in a little blue cheese at the end and grapes and blue cheese are a very happy pairing. The ‘super grain’ part is a mix of white, red and black quinoa and amaranth that you’ll find from Ceres in the organics section (you can get it ready mixed all in one bag). I feel healthy just writing it and it has a nice mild nutty flavour that seems to go down OK with the kids (it’s gluten free as well). You just simmer it for about 15 mins in boiling water and then cool it for the salad (you can rinse it in cold water using a sieve if you don’t have time to let it cool on it’s own). I put some olive oil, apple cider vinegar and lemon on to dress the salad but it would carry any dressing well.
If you’re looking at the salad photo and thinking it might be a bit of a hard sell to the little guys then it’s easy to cut them some sticks of the vegetables with maybe some mashed avocado to dip them in and to give them a serving of the super-grains on the side. That’s how my little dudes like it but all kids have their own strange ways.
The final hurrah of this fantastic Friday supper is that you get a chicken carcass, and maybe even some leftover chicken if you have a slightly less greedy (or smaller) family than mine. You can put it straight on to boil for stock and then you’ll have a lovely batch of stock to cook with over the weekend. You can also make the salad bigger than you’ll need as it’s a great BBQ accompaniment or pizza side which make Saturday’s meals a bit easier.
Quick dinner tonight as full on day and late home. Put the sausages under the grill and some quinoa on to cook then chopped some orange, mint from garden, shaved a zucchini (a little too small to pick really but decided to anyway) carrots, cucumber, crumbled feta. Added the cooked quinoa and dressed it with olive oil mixed with honey and red wine vinegar. Fresh corn on the side.
The garden mint is fantastic at the moment – which is all the more impressive for the fact that very little seems to do well in our garden. I must have read something about mint and orange somewhere because I just kept thinking about them together today. Got some great fat pork sausages today in Moore Wilsons and managed not to over cook them which I often do in eagerness to ensure they definitely don’t have any raw spots. For the salad I cooked a cup of red and black quinoa and rinsed it in cold water, mixed it with a handful of mint leaves and a gorgeous orange cut into chunks. Added some leaves from the garden although not as many as I’d have liked because the cucumber plant has totally taken over the salad barrel and is suffocating the lettuce. Toasted up some sesame seeds in a hot pan and then to give it a bit more crunch added a few carrot sticks. For the dressing I mixed avocado oil with some new pomegranate balsamic and some runny honey.
This salad sounds insanely busy in a very unfashionable way doesn’t it? I believe it’s in vogue these days to go minimal. Short lists of ingredients. Simple. So I’m off trend once again. Never-mind, the salad was rather lovely with big fat sausages.
on the monkey trail 