Sat 07 & Sun 08 Nov 2015
Festive Kale Salad with Sweet Apple Cinnamon Vinaigrette & Pecan Parmesan
This recipe is from the Oh She Glows Cookbook (page 121), and seems to be a rather Christmas-y, sweeter, and spicier version of the The Best Shredded Kale Salad, which I used to love making in the past. It’s Christmas-y because of the lovely Christmas colours (as you can see) and for me, the first bite conjured the thoughts, tastes, and smells of of mulled wine... and spice.... and all things nice!
Salad:
Kale, triple washed and cut into small pieces
Seeds of one pomegranate
Apple, diced
Raisins, handful (didn’t have dried cranberries)
A complex dressing of apple cider vinegar, cinnamon, lemon juice, olive oil, minced ginger, maple syrup, & salt.
Pecan parmesan (i.e. a vegan take on parmesan) made from toasted pecans, nutritional yeast, salt, & olive oil.
Afterthoughts:
I gripe a little about kale salads, because I find that raw kale takes so much effort to clean, especially when it’s organic. You really do need to soak kale, run it under water, rinse it, repeat ---- essentially, triple wash it. I always find so much residue on it, not to mention gross aphids. If you actually enter the word “aphid” on Google, you will automatically see “aphids kale” pop up on the dropdown guess list.
Despite the effort, I really like this salad. It is bold and has a lot of punch. I think that next time I would cut the volume of the dressing in half.... or buy a larger bunch of kale to soak up the dressing. I ended up with a puddle of dressing at the bottom of the bowl.
The pecan parmesan is savoury and balances with the sweetness and tartness of the salad. A brilliant idea.
The salad is good with an extra teaspoon of ginger. I think I would also cut down a bit on the maple syrup.
Rating: 9.5/10 (0.5 off because I’m sweating the small stuff).
:o)