There are so many great things to say about salads that it’s impossible to understand why they’re not on everyone’s preferred dinner menu during the warm months of the summer. They’re easy, refreshing, healthy, filling, and practically impossible to get wrong. Even if you add too much of one ingredient or not enough of another ingredient, you can easily correct the recipe – or even more probably, just go ahead and serve the dish without anyone every suspecting that there’s anything amiss.
Salads can be adjusted for almost any allergy, food sensitivity or alternative diet and you can munch them while you read, watch TV or play at our fav online casino. Check out some of this summer’s top salads.
Haloumi and Couscous
Fried haloumi cheese is a perfect complement to a traditional Moroccan couscous dish which, when made cold, is perfect for a summer main dish.
Couscous
Cook 250 grams of prepared couscous.
Fry:
- Slice halumi cheese. Pat dry and coat with bread crumbs mixed with Moroccan spice mix (or a mix of salt, pepper, cumin and turmeric). Add oil to frying pan and fry the coated halumi cheese on both sides until golden on each side.
- Slice 2 zucchini and fry them with a little bit of oil and salt.
Combine:
- Couscous
- Zucchini
- 250 grams halved cherry tomatos
- ½ cup fresh mint leaves
- ½ cup fresh parsley leaves
Dressing - Combine:
- 2 Tbsp Greek yoghurt
- 1 small clove of crushed garlic
- 1 tbsp tahini
- Juice of 1 lemon
Assemble
- Divide the couscous salad into bowls and top with haloumi cheese and pomegranate seeds.
- Drizzle with dressing
- Serve with pita
Beet Salad
Beets are an excellent source of iron but it’s always hard to convince people to eat them. Beets have a strong taste and not everyone likes the strong flavor. But this beet salad mixes a variety of different tastes and textures to create a salad that is much more suitable to many different types of tastes.
Some people cook the beets before putting them in a salad but you don’t need to do that. Just peel 2 beets and put them through a grater blade of a food processor along with 2 carrots.
Add:
- cranberries
- almond slivers
- sugar
- lemon juice
Mix and serve. Try leaving out the sugar….with the cranberries, often the lack of sugar isn’t even noticeable.
Root Vegetable/Pasta
This salad takes a bit more prep time because the various ingredients each have their own cooking time. But when you put it all together, it’s worth the effort
Vegetables:
Dice and roast, individually, each in olive oil, salt and pepper:
- zucchini – half an hour at medium temperature
- eggplant – one hour at high temperature (suggested to dice and salt several hours before cooking, then drain the liquid that the salt releases from the eggplant before cooking – if you do this, don’t add extra salt before cooking)
- beets – one hour at high temperature
- mushrooms – 20 minutes at medium temperature
Assemble:
- cook 250 grams pasta
- lay the cooked vegetables on the bed of pasta
- spread cubes of feta cheese on the vegetables
- Sprinkle balsamic vinegar and olive oil over the top.
- Serve warm
Tabouli
Tabouli is a light grain dish. Most people prefer to make tabular with bulgur, which tis the traditional way of making tabouli, but many people find that making it with quinoa adds flavor, texture and nutritional benefits.
Mix together:
- 250 grams cooked bulgur or quinoa
*For quinoa, rinse the quinoa thoroughly before cooking, then dry roast the quinoa before cooking it in boiling water – 2 cups of boiling water to 1 cup of quinoa)
*for bulgur, pour 1 cup of dry bulgur into 1 cup of boiling water and leave it to sit
- Add chopped parsley, mint, green onion, tomatos, cucumbers
- Add cooked chick peas
- Season with olive oil, lemon and salt
German Potato Salad
No national group has a better reputation for cooking potatos than the Germans. It’s one of their national dishes that you can find at any German celebration. It’s fairly easy but it’s not worth the effort if you’re not going to do it right.
- Boil 2 pounds of potatos in a pot with water and a salt. Cook until the potatos are soft and can be pierced with a knife, but not so long that they turn mushy. Drain and allow to cool. Transfer to a mixing bowl and cube.
- Saute 1 sliced red onion and add ¼ c. apple cider vinegar, 1 tbsp water, 1 tbsp olive oil, ½ tsp dijon mustard. Season with salt and pepper
- Add mixture to the cubed potatos. Toss and stir in sliced green onions
- Serve warm.
Avocado and Tomato
This is a great, easy and nutritious salad but if the avocados are dominant here, so if they’re not ripe and firm, don’t bother.
- Cube the avocados and put them in a large serving bowl. Add halved cherry tomatos, corn kernels (fresh if you have it….it not, canned or frozen) and sliced cucumbers.
- Sprinkle cilantro and toss with vinegrette of extra-virgin olive oil, ¼ tsp cumin, juice of one lemon, salt and pepper. If you want to spice things up a bit, add some chopped jalepeño pepper.
Waldorf Salad
Waldorf Salad is traditionally made with mayonnaise as the dressing but you can experiment with other dressings that may allow you to leave out the fat and keep all the flavor:
- In a bowl, mix 1 cup halved red grapes, 1 cup chopped apples, 1 cup sliced celery, 1 can cubed pineapple, 1 cup walnuts, 1 cup chopped dates (optional)
- For the dressing, you may want to use the pineapple syrup or make your own dressing with 2 Tbsp Greek yogurt and 2 Tbsp. mayonnaise.
- Serve over lettuce
