I haven’t posted a nice salad recipe for a while now! This winter chick pea salad with (frequent readers of the blog will recognize them from the Caesar salad), pumpkin and kale which are not only nutritious but also delicious! It’s a nutritionally rich meal as chickpeas offer protein, tahini offers healthy fats, and kale and pumpkin plenty of vitamins and fibres (pumpkin is a good source of carotene B that converts into vitamin A when in the body). Kale is a very good source of calcium, (which is further enhanced by tahini), vitamin K which nourishes the small intestine and helps healing the wounds and the health of the bones. The salad’s dressing is my latest obsession this week, it’s so delicious to put anywhere: in salads, baked vegetables, in quinoa or in rice when I make Buddha bowls… I can’t get enough of it! It’s particularly dry, while sesame oil and tamari (gluten-free soya bean) give it an Asian touch. I’m sure it’ll become one of your favourites. Massaging kale is essential for it to soften, be chewed easily and to lose a bit of its bitterness otherwise it’s not easy to eat.
Ingredients (for 4 people)
200gr of kale
2 spoons of olive oil
1 sliced pumpkin
For the chickpea croutons
– 200gr boiled chickpeas
– 1 tsp of garlic powder
– ¼ tsp of cayenne pepper
– ¼ tsp salt
For the sesame seed:
– 2 spoons of fine quality sesame oil
– 1 spoon of apple cider vinegar
– 1 tsp of tamari or soy
– 1 tsp of maple syrup or honey
– 1 tsp tahini
Preparation
Cut the kale into small pieces with your hands and remove the pieces with the stalks. Pour vegetable oil on the kale and massage it until it begins to soften and gets a dark green colour. Do this with a lot of love, it will add to the taste!
Preheat the oven at 175 degrees.
Stir the boiled chick peas into a baking tray, sprinkling with the crouton seasonings. you don’t have to sprinkle them with olive oil so that they become crunchy. In the same tray, put 4-5 pumpkin slices and add a few of the crouton seasonings. Bake in the oven for about 15 minutes until the croutons are dry and the pumpkin is softened.
Put all sauce ingredients in a cup and mix with a spoon.
Serve the kale in a salad bowl, garnish with croutons and pumpkin slices and pour with the sesame seed sauce.