Salad is not something that comes to mind when Indian food is discussed. Although the cuisine has a plethora of salads - cooked, raw, with yogurt, with nuts - they are a side dish, never the main course.
That’s why my parents are stumped when I tell them I had salad for lunch. How does it satisfy hunger, they ask incredulously? By making it big, bold and beautiful, I assure them. Rife with textures, colors and major food groups - vegetables, greens, fruits, nuts, beans and cheese, the BBB salad is plush. I indianize it, by slipping in sprouted mung beans - for heft - and tadka - for oomph.
Now let’s talk about each component of the big, bold, beautiful salad –
Greens – My favorite are a combo of arugula and butter or iceberg lettuce. Arugula’s zing shines against the neutral and crunchy canvas of the iceberg lettuce. Choose any greens you prefer though I will be thankful if you skip spinach. After getting drenched with dressing, spinach becomes slithery and is a mismatch with the other robust ingredients. I would rather use chopped spinach in a dal.
Vegetables – Cucumbers, grape or cherry tomatoes, shaved or grated carrots are lovely.
Fruits – Hearty fruits like apples and pears rock my salad boat.
Nuts – My friend and colleague, N, revealed the secret of soaked walnuts to me. She grew up in Iran, where soaked walnuts are part of an herb platter served with most meals.
Soaked and sprouted mung beans - Sprouting reduces phytates or phytic acid in beans that cause flatulence and indigestion and unmasks the nutrients and vitamins for easy absorption.
Mung bean is the easiest to sprout but I also sprout brown lentils, black chickpeas and moth beans to bulk up salads, wraps and soups. You will find the internet agog with blogs about sprouting rice, quinoa, broccoli seeds.
Here’s how I sprout mung beans -
For a yield of 1 cup of sprouted beans, soak ¼ cup whole green mung beans in 2 cups water overnight or for at least 6 hours. Drain the water from soaked beans. Spread the beans on a flat plate and pick out hard, unsoaked beans and discard. Place the soaked beans in a wet cheese cloth (or any thin cloth or kitchen towel), bring the ends together and twist the ends into a loose knot. Place this bundle, with the twisted end facing down, in a colander and place the colander in another pot or a tray. Store in a corner on the counter. Check every few hours to ensure that the cheese cloth is moist. Sprinkle water on the cheese cloth if not moist. Warm weather will hasten the sprouting and after 24 hours you will have robust sprouts, 1/4” to 1/2” long. In winter the same may take 48 or 72 hours. Store them in an airtight container in the refrigerator and they will last for about a week. (sprouts in the image below have been sprouted for a few days for long tails)
Cheese – fresh mozzarella or crumbled feta cheese are wonderful additions. Mozzarella surrenders itself to the flavors of the dressing and feta because it stimulates the salad with tanginess.
Homemade croutons – Please make more than specified in the salad recipe below. Otherwise, they will be gone before the salad is assembled. Feel free to use store-bought ones too.
Other possible add-ons – chopped avocados, radishes, celery
Tadka Salad Dressing – And we are back to discussing tadka again. Considering the centrality of this foundational technique to Indian cuisine, its versatility and the zing it brings to the dish, we will be returning to this topic again and again in ChutneyLovers.
In Oven-Roasted Aloo Gobi, we talked about tadka as a flavor builder. Tadka also known as baghaar, chaunk, fodni is seasoned oil and a way to build a layer of flavor even before adding main ingredients. It is prepared by heating, preferably, a neutral oil and adding whole spices to it. The hot oil unlocks the magic kingdom of spices, which release their flavors into the oil, which, in turn, is ready to infuse those flavors into whatever follows, be it dal, vegetables or alliums.
There are two other ways to use tadka – as a finishing oil and as a salad dressing
In the last post about Dal Chawal, there was a recipe for a side dish called Carrot Slaw, where tadka is added at the end and brings the whole dish together. On the same lines, I wrote an article and recipe for Tadka Salad Dressing for Food52 in 2019. In September 2022, Food52 released, Simply Genius, the third cookbook in their Genius series. Rife with tips, techniques and suggestions to scramble out of culinary snafus, Simply Genius is an extremely handy cookbook. My recipe, Tadka Salad Dressing, is featured in this beautiful work.
The idea behind this recipe is to gain leverage from building flavors. Instead of the standard olive oil, how about using olive oil drunk with spices? So even before putting together the dressing, we are starting with an ingredient which is pumped with flavors. And rest assured, we will visit tadka as a finishing oil in the future.
RECIPE - BIG, BOLD AND BEAUTIFUL SALAD
Ingredients I for salad
¼ cup walnuts
3 slices sourdough, ciabatta or whole wheat bread
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cups arugula, very roughly chopped
1 green leaf or butter lettuce with leaves torn by hands according to the size you prefer
20 cherry tomatoes
1 medium carrot peeled and grated (comes to over a cup)
1 medium cucumber peeled and chopped into 1” x 1” pieces (over 2 cups)
1 medium pear chopped into pieces 1.5” x 1.5”
10 Castelvetrano olives cut into 2 pieces each
1 cup fresh mozzarella cheese cut into ½” cubes
1 cup soaked and sprouted mung bean sprouts (use store bought ones from Asian stores if you don’t have time to sprout) And while testing this recipe, I did not get a chance to plan in advance, so I ended up using the store-bought ones.
Ingredients II for the salad dressing
3 tablespoons olive oil
¼ teaspoon black mustard seeds
1.5 tablespoons lime juice
1 teaspoon mustard paste
2 teaspoons honey
½ teaspoon tahini
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon crushed black pepper
Yield – Serves 4 people
Method
(I have written the steps that require the max prep time first such as the soaking time for walnuts and cooling down time for the tadka. The ingredients, however, are clubbed together according to the sub-recipes within the salad recipe.)
Heat oven to 300 degrees (because of the small quantity, I used toaster oven)
Soak ¼ cup walnuts in 1 cup water in a bowl for about an hour.
Tear the 3 slices of bread into pieces about an inch long and wide. Spread the torn pieces on a sheet pan and pour 2 tablespoons olive oil on them. Rub with hands and make sure the olive oil has touched all the pieces.
Insert the sheet pan in the hot oven and keep a close eye on it. No texting or scrolling for the croutons can burn in a wink. Rotate the sheet pan to bring the back side to the front after 3 minutes. Turn the oven off when the bread pieces acquire an uneven brown color (like hard pretzels). That should take about 6 minutes.
Heat 3 tablespoons oil in a small pot on medium heat. You have seen my tadka pot in the Oven-Roasted Aloo Gobi post. Let it heat for 2 minutes. Add 1 mustard seed to test if the oil is hot. If the seed hits the oil and starts sizzling, the oil is ready and hot for the tadka.
Now add rest of the mustard seeds. Turn the heat off once the sizzling stops. Let the tadka cool.
In a small mixing bowl, stir together 1.5 tablespoons lime juice, 1 teaspoon mustard paste, 2 teaspoons honey, ½ teaspoon tahini, ½ teaspoon salt and ¼ teaspoon crushed black pepper.
Pour in the cooled down tadka and mix well. Initially the tadka oil will not integrate into the rest of the ingredients and stay separate. Don’t worry for you are made of steel! Keep on stirring and soon the dressing will transform and become homogenous.
Now the salad portion. Take a large mixing bowl and combine in lettuce leaves and arugula.
Add 20 cherry tomatoes, 1 cup grated carrots, 2 cups chopped cucumbers, 1 medium pear chopped, 10 Castelvetrano olives, 1 cup cut-up fresh mozzarella cheese, 1 cup sprouted mung bean sprouts, soaked 1/4 cup walnuts and croutons from 3 slices of bread.
Pour the tadka dressing, toss and adjust for salt and pepper according to your taste.
Serve this gorgeous salad right away.
Before bidding adieu, I wish to give a shoutout to my talented and beautiful niece, Vidisha. She is a dentist, and she opened a swanking new dental operatory earlier this month in Jaipur, India. If any of you happen to be in this western Indian city and have a dental issue, Vidisha will take care of you.
In the next post, ChutneyLovers is going to its roots. There will be two recipes of chutneys and also recipes of how to incorporate them in your meal. You will then believe me that chutneys have super-powers.
Do you have a recipe you want to try, test? Something you like a lot but have not had the time to re-create at home. Do tell.
Love the tadka dressing, what a great idea!
This sounds so good Annada. I wonder what it would be like with paneer instead of mozzarella?