This salad provides more than just a delicious flavour combination. Each one of the three parts - from the nuts to the dressing - adds vital nutrients to help form a well-balanced meal. Fresh nuts and seeds aid heart health as they add natural polyunsaturated fats and minerals such as calcium. Cashews, in particular, provide copper, zinc, and magnesium, which are essential for many body processes. Recent research shows that consuming a small amount of nuts daily not only promotes heart and cardiovascular health but can also reduce gallstone risk.
Making salad dressing at home is a great opportunity to supplement with healthy oils, herbs, and seasonings such as garlic or ginger.
Curried Cashews:
3/4 cup (175 mL) cashews
1 Tbsp (15 mL) extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp (5 mL) fresh rosemary, finely chopped
1 tsp (5 mL) curry powder
1 tsp (5 mL) dark brown sugar
1/2 tsp (2.5 mL) sea salt
1/2 tsp (2.5 mL) cayenne pepper
Honey-Sesame Vinaigrette:
3 Tbsp (45 mL) white wine vinegar
3 Tbsp (45 mL) Dijon mustard
2 Tbsp (30 mL) honey
1 tsp (5 mL) minced fresh garlic
3 Tbsp (45 mL) sesame seeds, toasted
1/2 cup (125 mL) cold-pressed organic grape-seed oil
Sea salt, to taste
Fresh ground black pepper to taste
Spinach and Pear Salad:
12 cups (3 L) baby spinach, washed and loosely packed
6 cups (1.5 L) frisée (curly endive), washed and loosely packed
1/2 cup (125 mL) peeled and thinly sliced red onion
3 small ripe pears, thinly sliced
2 cups (500 mL) red grapes
To prepare Curried Cashews, preheat oven to 400°F (200°C). Roast cashews on baking sheet until golden, about 8 minutes, but watch carefully so they do not burn. Meanwhile combine oil, rosemary, curry powder, sugar, salt, and cayenne in a medium bowl. Remove cashews from oven and add them to bowl while still hot. Mix well to coat. Set aside.
To prepare Honey-Sesame Vinaigrette, whisk together vinegar, mustard, honey, garlic, and sesame seeds in a small bowl. Slowly whisk in grape-seed oil and season with salt and pepper. Set aside.
Now assemble the salad. On a large serving platter, lay out baby spinach leaves. Tear frisée into bite-size portions and place frisée with red onion on top of spinach. Decorate with pear slices, red grapes, and Curried Cashews. Just before serving, drizzle some of the Honey Sesame Vinaigrette over the salad. Alternatively, add everything together to a large bowl and toss with a generous amount of dressing. Serve immediately. Serves 6.
source: "Your Vegetable Garden May Be Your Best Nutrient Source", alive #374, August 2005
Lime juice and ginger add a tropical whiff to this French-Japanese mashup, where seaweed tendrils and Dijon mustard bring out the umami flavours in mushrooms and eggplant. The ingredients might seem to be strange bedfellows, but they work. The result is somewhere between a quiche and a soufflé, with a gluten-free eggplant crust featuring punchy mustard and citrus. This makes for a hearty vegetarian main for brunch, lunch, or dinner with a side salad, or a filling side dish. Fresh or dried If you don’t have fresh thyme and parsley, use 1 tsp (5 mL) dried thyme (divided) and 1 Tbsp (15 mL) dried parsley. The flavours won’t be as pungent, but a little flavour is better than none.
These are the perfect two-bite appetizers. Though the first bite likely won’t “wow” you, the more you chew, the more the salt from the dulse soaks into the avocado and tomato. Wait for it. You can also turn these into breakfast à la avocado toast by substituting a piece of your favourite bread for a slice of baguette. What’s in a name? Theoretically, this should be called a “DLTA” because of the avocado (dulse, lettuce, tomato, and avocado). And if you left out the lettuce, you’d have a “DTA.” A DTA would arguably be a better overall eating experience, since lettuce slightly waters down the rich and creamy result and makes it harder to keep the tomatoes from sliding off the top of the crostini. But the juicy lettuce is actually helpful, since it spreads the salt from the dulse throughout the entire bite, making the “wow” moment come sooner. Besides, neither DLTA nor DTA is as fun an acronym as DLT.
This triple-threat recipe is made with (up to) three types of seaweed. Wakame is essential for the pesto, but kombu boosts the umami punch of sautéed garlic and cherry tomatoes, while kelp noodles are a low-carb substitute for flour-based noodles. Because kelp noodles can be hard to find (you’ll likely need to order them online), feel free to use your favourite boxed linguine, zucchini noodles, shirataki konjac, tofu, or yam noodles instead. You can also leave out the vongole (clams) to keep the recipe plant-based, or use mussels, which are usually more affordable than clams. Both clams and mussels are generally sustainable, as, like seaweed, they’re farmed without feed or antibiotics, unlike many farmed fish operations. Double-duty pesto Make a double batch of seaweed pesto, and enjoy it with eggs, scrambled tofu, or toast.
Spicy popcorn? You bet. This Japanese seven-spice blend combines salty and spicy notes for a healthy snack. If you don’t make your own togarashi, check the container before adding it to your popcorn to make sure it doesn’t contain salt. For an even simpler recipe, skip the togarashi and just grind a few pieces of nori and a pinch of salt in a blender or spice grinder to sprinkle on your popcorn instead. If you’re fresh out of nori, you can always grind wakame, arame, or dulse instead, leaving out the pinch of salt for dulse or any seaweed you taste and find already salty. Shichimi togarashi This customizable spice blend generally features sansho pepper, a.k.a. Japanese prickly ash, a green peppercorn with a citrusy taste, along with seaweed flakes, chili pepper, and dried citrus peel—often yuzu or mandarin orange. If you can’t find sansho, look for Sichuan peppercorn, which has a slightly stronger mouth-tingling effect. You can buy dried orange, mandarin, or tangerine peel. Or you can dehydrate your own, in which case you might as well dehydrate a 1/8 in (3 mm) thick piece of fresh ginger along with the peel. If you can’t handle a lot of chili pepper heat, reduce the pepper to your taste.