Normal salad
The other day, M asked for our "normal salad". I immediately thought she meant Israeli salad (which in Israel is called Arabic salad). An Israeli salad is made with tomatoes, cucumbers, and generally also an onion as the base, dressed with olive oil and salt. Then you can add whatever you have around: capsicum, avocado, corn, legumes, nuts, tuna, chicken... you get the idea. Israelis eat this salad for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, almost daily. So obviously, that’s what I thought M was talking about. Wrong!
M was talking about a Caprese salad. A Caprese salad is an Italian salad, made of fresh mozzarella, tomatoes, sweet basil leaves, and seasoned with salt and olive oil. Our friend Hannah introduced a 2-year old M to eating basil leaves straight from the garden, which M does regularly now (bought basil from the supermarket yesterday cause my plant died, and M was eating the leaves while we were in the supermarket). When M was born, Hannah came over to cook for us, and guess what she made us? You guessed it, a Caprese salad.
My favourite version of a Caprese salad comes with heirloom tomatoes and fresh burrata, separated into chunks by hand. However, at home we standardised on a "cheat" version made with bocconcini, cherry tomatoes, and basil leaves. I think the combination of small pieces of cheese with lightly salted cherry tomatoes make this a kid-friendly salad. It is featured almost weekly in our meal plans. So no wonder M requested the “normal” salad then, right?
Speaking of salads, a few that we love and have variations of on a regular basis are: Mei Mei's magical kale salad, orange and fennel salad, Freekeh salad with fennel and mint and lettuce with blue cheese dressing (paywall).
What is your "normal" salad?
By the way, you can keep the leftover "juice" from an Israeli salad and use it in a martini.
M just saw this photo and asked to have this for lunch...
Here are this week’s recipe suggestions for you to try:
Spaghetti with Burrata and garlic-chilli oil - cannot go wrong with these ingredients
Slow cooker chilli - super easy, put everything in a pot and let it cook for hours (original recipe is on NYT Cooking)
Easy vegan poutine with thin carrot and potato sticks
Chickpea salad with roasted sweet potato and tahini
1 medium size sweet potato, peeled and cut into cubes
200g chickpeas, soft
2 garlic cloves, sliced
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 tbsp olive oil
Cherry tomatoes, halved
Lettuce, sliced
Avocado, sliced
Tahini dressing
Salt, to taste
How to?
Heat the oven to 180c. Steam the sweet potato for a few minutes. Then transfer to a baking dish, top with olive oil and a sprinkle of salt. Bake for 20 minutes or until soft and crunchy.
Salt the tomatoes to taste and leave to season.
Toss the chickpeas with olive oil, garlic, salt and smoked paprika. Heat a skillet over medium heat. Add the chickpeas and sauté for 3 minutes, or until the chickpeas start to dry out and are heated through. Remove from the heat and set aside.
Dress lettuce in a serving bowl with half the tahini dressing. Fold in the chickpeas, avocado, tomatoes, and roasted sweet potato. Drizzle with the remainder of the tahini dressing, and serve warm.
Our meal plan from last week can be found at: https://foodfamily.app/public/meal_plans/e72d738a-ffab-4642-aacb-d9a9feae1946
Once again, please let us know if you make any of these recipes, how you found them, what you changed, or just drop us an email to say hi.
Thanks and see you next week,
Elle, Lachlan, M, Ginger, and Edward