Festive Spicy Winter Salad
I’m not sure how I got to make this recipe. It started out as an Peter Gordon favourite and then I got carried away. It’s a visual treat to have this dish on your festive table. It has a whopping 13 plants plus olive oil which is full of polyphenols. So this is a fabulous dish for your microbial diversity.
Delicious served with fish, roast lamb or chicken, as it is, on toast, or stuffed in a pitta. As it’s a robust salad, it will keep for a day in the fridge if sealed well, just in case you have leftovers.
Don’t forget to improvise. Substitute pecans for walnuts or hazelnuts, pears for apples, cheddar for feta - whatever you happen to have.
Ingredients
6 tbsp olive oil
small bunch cavolo nero, stems removed and chopped into shreds
Half a butternut squash, sliced into crescents. Delicata squash is also lovely
1 apple
2 red onions, thinly sliced
6 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
2 tsp chopped rosemary
1 red or green chilli, thinly sliced, including seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
2 x 400g canned chickpeas, drained and rinsed
3 tbsp lemon juice
8 strips lemon peel, julienned
1 tsp salt
200g diced feta
1/2 cup pecans, lightly toasted
1 handful chopped fresh parsley or coriander
1 handful chopped fresh mint leaves
Method
Preheat oven to 180 deg C. Toss the squash with 1 tbsp of the olive oil, season and roast for about 20 mins, turning halfway until the edges are golden brown. Remove from oven and cool.
In a saucepan over a medium heat, add 4 tbsp of the oil and gently saute the onions, garlic, rosemary, chilli and cumin seeds until caramelised, stirring frequently.
Add the chickpeas, lemon juice and lemon peel and salt, simmer until most of the liquid has evaporated, stirring often. Tip into a bowl, add the kale so it wilts very slightly and the dressing softens the leaves. Leave to cool as you are going to serve this at room temperature.
Add the feta, squash, apple, pecans, mint and parsley and the remaining 1 tbsp of oil and mix everything together. Taste for seasoning and serve.