Not Just a Man's World

This is the salad that I used with the Cajun salmon, featured last week.  It’s a basic format that you can adjust according to the food you are serving it with and what is available in your fridge.  I like using vegetables as salad ingredients, perhaps because I find the vegetables are more flexible.  This being England you can’t predict the weather.  If it’s suddenly cold and wet I can cook them up and serve them warm but if, as we had this day, it is suddenly really hot and summery, I can turn them into a refreshing crunchy cold salad instead.

The easiest thing to adjust is your choice of herbs – the recipe below uses the ones I used for the salmon but the original herb combination that was provided with the Cajun salmon recipe (which originally had a more traditional salad with cucumber, spring onions etc) was dill and mint.  If I’d done the Cajun marinade with chicken I would have used coriander leaves instead of parsley.

Paleo green vegetable salad

Ingredients (serves 2):
1 courgette (zucchini), sliced
1 small head broccoli, cut into very small florets
1 bunch asparagus, woody stems removed and cut into approx 3 inch lengths
1 green bell pepper, sliced
1 tbsp parsley, roughly chopped
1 tbsp chives, roughly chopped

Directions:

1. Bring a large pan of water to the boil, add the broccoli and asparagus and simmer for 2 minutes.
2. Add the courgette to the pan and simmer for a further 2 minutes.  You want the vegetables to still be fairly crunchy – you’re just taking the raw edge off them and also brightening up the green colouring.
3. Immediately after the cooking time is up, remove from the heat, drain off the boiling water and rinse thoroughly in cold water until the vegetables are cold to stop the cooking process (this blanching process also brightens up the colour some more).
4. Put the vegetables into a bowl, add the sliced pepper and the herbs and toss together until well combined.

Related posts:

1. Paleo recipes: Niçoise salad
2. Paleo recipes: fennel and orange salad
3. Paleo recipes: roasted asparagus and rocket salad
4. Paleo recipes: warm goat’s cheese salad