I love salads. When I don’t feel like cooking or spending more than 20 minutes in the kitchen I usually grab some veggies and make a badass salad. In order to make your salad stand out and be more interesting than the annual mixed salad for bbq to pretend you’re eating kind of healthy, you should try to add at least 1 or 2 ‘special’ components that give your salad a nice touch. That could be anything from exotic veggies, cheese or nuts and seeds to dried fruits.
What is also very important is a proper dressing which does not overlay the taste of the salad ingredients but adds to them. This is why I’d like to introduce you to a new component, you might want to have in your kitchen at all times. I’m talking about sesame paste also known as Tahini. It has a very specific, strong and bitter taste (you should not try to eat it pure 😉 but adds a very unique touch to sauces and dressings (you can also make a very nice ketchup with it). I usually mix it with water, which takes some time as the paste is, well … pasty, and gooey ^^, add some other spices (paprika, cumin, curry, oregano – whatever you like), salt and sometimes chili sauce (sambal). It makes a quick and delicious sauce for a vegetable fry-up or noodle dish. Or a salad 😉
Just to make that clear: Tahini has a very unique, peculiar taste and not everybody might like it. My first tries with Tahini failed miserably and I didn’t touch it for weeks. But now, whenever I don’t really know what to cook, I simply add some tahini to my fried somethings and it’s awesome! So don’t be shy and embrace the unkonwn 😀
For this salad I used up all the leftovers I had in my fridge plus some highlights I found in my supply closet → divine pine seeds! Pine seeds just make everything better. Really. If you find them too expensive you can also try roasting some sunflower or pumpkin seeds. Any kind of roasted seeds is quite brilliant.
Enough talk. Here’s the recipe
