Who ate the courgette?

A couple of weeks ago, I saw a delicious looking recipe for a raw vegetable and ginger salad in the paper; there was a very attractive picture to go with it and so I kept the recipe. There were ingredients which I had already, and some I needed to buy, including lime and lemon, beetroot, ginger, herbs and seeds. I had everything else until I came to make it and found that someone had eaten the courgettes! (that must have been me!) I substituted asparagus as I had some of that and thought it would be nice with everything else – though I did cook it as I don’t find raw asparagus has very much flavour at all. I did cook it to be al dente though.

here are the ingredients the recipe gives for four people:

50g cashew nuts
30g sunflower seeds
2 carrots
1 raw beetroot
1 courgette
1 red pepper, seeded and thinly sliced
½ a small white cabbage, cored and very finely sliced
2 spring onions, finely sliced on the diagonal
lime wedges, to serve

This is what I used for me, with a bit left over for another time:

15g cashew nuts
20g sunflower seeds
20g pumpkin seeds
1 carrot, peeled and sliced into match sticks
½ small raw beetroot, peeled and sliced into match sticks
6 asparagus spears (cooked to taste) and sliced into long strips – I cut off the heads and used them as a garnish
½ red pepper, seeded and thinly sliced
¼ a small white cabbage, finely sliced
3 spring onions, finely sliced on the diagonal
(next time I will use a courgette – sliced into match sticks!)

When I made it I didn’t add the beetroot until just before serving as I didn’t want it to bleed into the other vegetables.

I made the dressing pretty much as the recipe said, again, cutting down on the amounts to go on a smaller salad. It was quite nice but the lemon and lime overpowered everything else in the salad and it was extremely sour. When I do it again – yes I will make it again – I will only use lime juice and I will add something to take the edge off the sourness, maybe pumpkin syrup.

Here are the original ingredients:

a large thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger, peeled and roughly chopped
1 tbsp rapeseed oil
the juice of 1 lemon
the juice of 1 lime
a handful of fresh mint
2 handfuls of fresh coriander

… and here are my ingredients (for next time!)

small piece of fresh ginger finely grated
as much oil of your choice as you think makes a good dressing (I use Greek olive oil)
juice and zest of ½ a lime
pomegranate syrup – add to taste
fresh Greek basil and coriander, roughly or finely chopped, however you like it, and as much or as little as you like
salt to taste

The original recipe was by Lily Simpson and Rob Hobson and I bet when they do it it’s utterly yummy.