La salade for today is a lunch thing, a delicious lunch thing if I may add. It all started with inspiration from my good neighbour Cait who brought over extra bean sprouts she wasn't planning on using. My lovely friend shared with me that she made a Thai-inspired salad from one of the Whitewater Cooks cookbooks. I did some digging around, and thought well YES that is a brilliant idea! (Cait, she has lots of good ideas. I am a lucky lucky neighbour and friend.) Knowing I had to be out of the house for most of the afternoon and all evening today, I thought to make the salad for lunch instead. And the post today is the end result: HEAVEN. Thank you Cait for the sprouts and the idea. Thank you Shelley Adams from Whitewater Cookbooks for all the inspirations you have provided for countless food-lovers and -makers. You are both gems.
Of course, being a nutritionist I had to tweak things to up that nutritional ante. I am also notorious at being unable to follow a recipe, nor be exact. It's more based on tastes and tweaks my friend, so go ahead and play with your food, willya?
You'll find the scrumptious recipe here (thanks to Canadian Health & Lifestyle for the post). What I swapped out:
FOR DRESSING: instead of the sweet chili sauce, I threw in about 4 of my fermented jalapeños; I only had 2 tbsp of rice wine vinegar so I added 2 tbsp of apple cider vinegar to equal the 4 tbsp required in the recipe; I used coconut aminos instead of the soy sauce (in order to lessen the ill effects of soy); I added in some fresh turmeric root in addition to the ginger because I had some and my liver asks for it all the time; I omitted the vegetable oil as I found it didn't need any oil when all blitzed together already. But you could use olive oil instead of vegetable oil to up that omega 3 count. HOLY SHNEIKERS THIS DRESSING IS KILLER. Be forewarned.
FOR THE SALAD: Instead of using the cooked rice noodles, we used a peeler to get long noodle-like shreds from about 2 lbs of carrots and blanched them in water on the stove for about 8 minutes, until they were similar in texture to rice noodles; didn't add the sesame oil; instead of the candied nuts and seeds (which would surely be delicious), I toasted pumpkin seeds and added them along with crushed brazil nuts to the salad as is. (Brazil nuts are high in selenium - a nutrient super-important in supporting the thyroid and its function, and one of those highly-sought-after antioxidants that are so important in our body's daily detoxification work.). And our veggies reflected more the state of our crisper: we had in the mix the blanched carrots, shreds of cucumber, radishes, yellow pepper, bean sprouts and radish sprouts. We garnished the dish with thai basil I cut a-la-chiffonade and tossed on top some smoked salmon.
Might I say this is one of the best lunches I have had in a long time. I think it might have had a lot to do with the company: my bestie came over and we chatted and visited whilst we prepared the goodies and tucked right in. Wednesdays are one of my favourite days of the week, for that very reason.
Orchid Lime Salad with tweaks, courtesy of Shelley Adams at Whitewater Cookbooks