I love summer cuisine. I love fresh fruit, BBQs and salads, ice-cream and icy drinks. I love to come home after a day in the sun to whip up a salad for dinner. This morning before our daily holiday beach visit I decided to try Sonali aka The Foodie Physician's recipe for Indian Spiced Eggplant. Inside my gift box FULL of fresh produce from The Lettuce Shop on Friday was a big, purple, plump eggplant, and since I have never cooked eggplant before I wasn’t going to waste it. I coincidently stumbled across the recipe on The Foodie Physician’s blog yesterday and decided to cook it this morning for my nephew. Now you have to know my oven door fell off awhile ago so when I bake the heat escapes and my tiny shoebox of a kitchen turns into a tiny sweatbox, especially on a day where it had hit 38 degrees celcius! The eggplant dish was a success, we scoffed it down (literally, there was not a morsel left by the time it had cooled!) and off we went to the beach for some well deserved reprieve from the sweatbox.
On our return and feeling very refreshed I did not fancy cranking up the oven to only heat the house up again, so I made this salad. This salad was declared by my athletic 15 year old, food loving nephew as 'the best'. His words.
Ingredients:
1 pear, finely sliced
1 bunch rocket
1 bunch baby spinach
1 handful each of chopped walnuts & sunflower kernels
Parmesan cheese
Dressing:
1 tbs honey (or 1 tbs mango chutney)
2 cloves garlic, crushed
Splash of balsamic vinegar
2 tbs olive oil
Freshly cracked sea salt & pepper
Roast nuts in hot pan for a few minutes until aromatic. Toss into a bowl with rocket and baby spinach. Add sliced pear, drizzle with combined dressing and top with freshly shaved parmesan. Summer salad delight!
The best.
Yum! This is a salad I've wanted to make for a while, I think the time has now come :) my mouth is watering!
ReplyDeleteOh, thanks for that recipe, need a new salad to try :0
ReplyDeleteThis salad looks simple and delicious! I love the savory and sweet combination of pears, walnuts and parmesan- yum! Thanks so much for mentioning my recipe. I'm so happy that your first eggplant cooking experience was a positive one and that your whole family enjoyed it! I hope you're having a nice holiday!
ReplyDeleteLeanne, the traditonal walnut and pear salad doesn't have the sunflower kernels, I added them myself. The dressing is just divine! My husband loves it, and takes minutes to whip up. Enjoy!
ReplyDelete@Jen, you're welcome, let me know what you think if you do make it. I love salads but get bored quickly if I make the same one over and over. I have a few new ones up my sleeve, this is my current favourite.
Thank you Sonali. The eggplant dish needed recommendation, it was so delicious! My 11 year old niece who did not like eggplant asked me to pass the recipe to my sister-in-law. She wants more!
ReplyDeleteThis salad is dreamy. The parmesan goes beautifully with the pear and the honey in the dressing only brings out the cheese flavour even more.
"The best!" from a 15 year old boy?! It doesn't get much better than that! Will definitely try this one...I'm sure it will counteract some of the Christmas chocolate pud.
ReplyDeleteIt certainly doesn't Teresa, although he is pretty happy with anything you serve up as he is continuously hungry. I whipped up BBQ prawns last night, that may have topped the salad!
ReplyDelete