Monday, March 16, 2015

Impromptu

Decided to do something impromptu. Posting the recipe of a salad that I make. Tastes great when accompanied by a soup.



Ingredients:
  1. Spinach Leaves (the younger the better; baby Spinach is the best for this salad)
  2. Onion
  3. Baby corn
  4. Cucumber
  5. Olive Oil
  6. Vinegar
  7. Salt
Procedure:
  1. Pan fry the baby corn in olive oil with minimum heat until it is coated golden brown/it appears mildly charred
  2. Cut the spinach leaves if they are too large
  3. Slice the onions length wise
  4. Slice the cucumber into rectangular chunks
  5. Mix all the ingredients in a large bowl; pour some vinegar and then mix some more
Additional Notes:
  1. You can fry mushrooms also along with baby corn. But remember that mushrooms cook a little faster than the baby corn so add them a little later, after the baby corn to the pan.
  2. You can top this salad with any of the seed varieties; could be flax seeds (said to be very nutritious when it is roasted and grounded), sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds (minimally of course) and so on.



Most salads I came across consisted of ingredients that are not easily available in the Indian market. This recipe is sort of my own invention with Indian ingredients.

We Indians are not great fans of salads. We like our idli, dosa, coconut chutney, chappathi, rice with curry and such. Who can blame us when they all taste so good! Our palettes will forever be addicted to them. But I really wish we started giving more preference to salads as well. Considering that they are so nutritious, fresh, have less calories, and have similar goodnesses about them.

Point is, I have really started liking salads. And I wish you do too.

Two TED talks I liked

I recently came across the following two TED talks, both of which I liked. In the first one, the Speaker talks about why it is important t...