Well well, you read it right. I have actually documented a salad recipe! By salad, I don’t mean raw vegetables neatly arranged onto a plate - that’s utterly boring. I mean - sautéed vegetables with a salad dressing coating them beautifully - now that’s yummy. If you’ve read my previously written ‘What’s cooking?’ article series, you can fathom that I love cooking foods which are not necessarily counted as healthy per se - which is rather unfortunate. But, let’s talk about what really motivated me into making a darn salad.
During my college years, I was underweight, weighing only 55-57 Kilograms; some friends were jealous that I didn’t have flab on my tummy. In my opinion, I was simply frail, weak and unhealthy! But, it did not take long for me to gain weight once I was back home in November 2019. My parents ensured that I was eating wholesome meals on time. There was absolutely no chance of skipping meals at home. So, slowly my college bad habits died out and I reached a healthy weight. At that time, I had also started walking and running every evening with my dad, which took care of my exercise requirements too. Everything was going smoothly until the lockdown was announced in March 2020 - forcing us all to stay home. After a few days, I started craving foods that we generally don’t make at home. Left with not many choices, I decided to start cooking them myself and surprisingly enjoyed the process too. We even bought an OTG in October 2020, which I used extensively to bake many goodies. All of this had an obvious effect on my body fat. But, I only realised that when I stood on the weighing scale. My parents noticed it too and warned me to stop unhealthy foods to prevent further weight gain. At first, I did not care too much, but then once self-realisation hit me hard, I decided to change myself. It has been hard to maintain that for too long. My willpower keeps dwindling which pushes me back to square one.
For now, let us focus on the time when my willpower was strong which led me to making this delicious salad. Salads are undoubtedly healthy. So many fresh vegetables, hardly any oil and an uncomplicated salad dressing for flavour. I had looked up online and tried a few salad recipes last year as well - you know at the times when I had a firm resolve to become healthier. Having made salad a couple of times, here is what I understand about the art of vegetarian salad-making.
You can pick any combination of vegetables of your choice.
Sautéing the vegetables is a good option if you do not prefer eating them completely raw like me.
Salad dressing is crucial as that gives all the flavour to the vegetables.
Adding some healthy fats such as cottage cheese (paneer) and cheese to the salad makes it tastier.
Don’t forget to add salt!
You can add spices like pepper powder, herbs, chilli flakes, etc.
Even though I have made salads a few times in the past, I was particularly excited to document this one as I came up with this recipe. My idea was to make a pesto salad! Now I do not know if it already exists or not. Maybe it does. But who cares, I am not looking at copyrighting this recipe. All that you and I should care about is whether it tasted good. And I swear, it tasted delicious!
Let’s get to the recipe then, shall we?
Pesto Salad
Any salad recipe is mainly divided into two parts:
The salad ingredients
The salad dressing
The Salad Ingredients
Ingredients
Mushrooms
Cabbage
Cottage cheese (Paneer)
Yellow bell pepper
Green capsicum
Red bell pepper
Boiled potatoes
Spring Onion (photo N/A)
You can add or subtract vegetables according to your preferences.
The Pesto - Salad Dressing
Ingredients
Coriander
Mint leaves
Walnuts
Garlic cloves
Cheese
Salt
Pepper
Oil
Water
For the pesto recipe, I give credits to David Rocco, a handsome Canadian chef who's originally from Italy. And my friend Arohi, who modified the recipe based on Indian ingredients. Then, I made my own little changes to that as well.
Recipe:
Dry roast the walnuts; wash your greens well.
After that add all your ingredients in the blender. At first don't add water, just add the oil for blending.
Keep blending for a while.
Open the blender to check the status; add some more oil if needed and blend again. You have to blend until it turns into a smooth thick paste.
If it's not blending properly, add little water. Be cautious there as you do not want it to become too runny.
Your pesto is ready once it reaches a thick consistency!
PS: I am sorry, I forgot to click a picture of the pesto. But I will add it when I make it again next time.
The Pesto Salad (Assembly)
The order of sautéing the vegetables entirely depends on your choice of vegetables. Every vegetable has a separate cooking time, hence you cannot pop everything in all at once.
Recipe:
First I put around 1-2 tablespoons of oil in the pan.
Once the oil was hot, I put in the mushroom and allowed its moisture to dry. Keep the flame on low while sautéing.
Then I added the three bell peppers and cooked them until they softened.
Post that, in went the rest of the ingredients, i.e. cabbage, boiled potatoes and paneer. Sauté them for 3-4 minutes.
For seasoning, I sprinkled some salt, pepper, chopped garlic and spring onion greens. You can also add mixed herbs or peri peri dry mix or other seasonings of your choice.
Finally, I added the pesto sauce and coated all the ingredients nicely it.
For a final touch, I shredded bits of cheese to enhance the taste of the pesto salad.
I transferred my salad into a big bowl for me and some into a smaller bowl for my dad.
Then I sat by the window and enjoyed my salad.
The pesto salad was delicious, healthy and something that I wouldn't mind making again and again! The fact that I made something healthy yet tasty felt like an achievement.
Even my dad really liked the salad, so that's another honest opinion for you to make your own pesto salad now!
I will surely come up with another salad recipe soon. Until then, I hope this motivates you to try making a salad if you haven't ever!
Eating healthy does raise my self-confidence. I think I will continue it until I lose the will to be healthy again. Although I do wish that never happens.
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