Make, Jane, make!: In Praise of Raw Foods: Two Days of Refreshing Salads

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Tuesday, August 9, 2011

In Praise of Raw Foods: Two Days of Refreshing Salads

The best thing about summer is the delight you get from a simple cold salad. All the ingredients are fresh and picked at their peak, making them the perfect candidates for raw consumption.


We received these strikingly purple beans in our CSA box a week or so ago and I've been envisioning them in a salad ever since. I made the mistake of blanching them however and they lost almost all their vivid colour - next time we'll have them completely raw... the kids will just have to learn to live with the tougher texture :)


I julienned the beans and added them to julienned kohlrabi, carrots, apples and radishes for a refreshing coleslaw. The kohlrabi definitely was a nice change to cabbage in this crisp slaw. The flavour was a lot more earthy and the salad a lot more juicy and tender than the usual cabbage based ones.

Side note: quick Coleslaw dressing = apple cider vinegar and sugar in equal amounts, large pinch of celery seeds, mayonnaise to taste and a dash of cream at the end to thin it out.


Day Two brought with it some corn we bought on the side of the road from some young boys and their pickup truck/make-shift tent. Gorgeous, ripe summer corn with super shiny kernels that look like they'd burst if you squeezed them a little too hard. Much of the dozen we bought went onto the grill because we cannot resist corn on the cob with just a touch of butter, salt and pepper... or plain! But a couple of ears went raw into this nice corn salad...


Super sweet and juicy corn, ripe avocado, cucumbers from our garden and perfectly sweet/tart cherry tomatoes from our farmshare - tossed with some lime juice and olive oil. Super simple. This salad was the perfect side to some grilled naan and tandoori chicken that was marinated and spatchcocked for the bbq (I'll post that recipe sometime later... it is soooo good).

It's back to Caesar salads now (with all the Romaine we have :) but these two salads were a nice diversion from the leafy norm.

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