Cauliflower Quiona Salad

Last week at work I attended a retirement lunch.  The lunch was held at White Spot. TRAUMA.  The invite email had a link to their menu and I discovered they had some interesting salads, so I thought maybe this won’t be too bad.

IT WAS BAD. REAL BAD. The cauliflower on the salad tasted like they didn’t know how to defrost frozen vegetables.

However, the traumatizing experience of eating White Spot salad inspired me to get creative with salads at home (mostly just to burn the flavour of white spot food out of my mouth forever).

I made a cauliflower, quinoa salad with leafy greens, and it was lovely. My cauliflower was well cooked and did not send shivers down the person ingesting its spine (I’m looking at you White Spot).  Usually, when I have had quinoa salad the ratio of quinoa to vegetables has been equal, but in this salad the quinoa is more of a top garnish which is actually a really nice way to use it!

Salad

• 1/3 cup quinoa
• 1/2 cup edamame (I used frozen)
• 1 pack leafy greens
• 2 TB chopped almonds
• 1 cup chopped cauliflower
• 1/4 tsp tumeric, paprika  and salt

Dressing

• 1/4 balsamic vinegar
• 2 TB honey mustard
• 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes

1. Steam the heads of cauliflower for around 5 minutes, you don’t want it to become to mushy.
2. Fry the cauliflower in 1/2 TB coconut oil with the tumeric, paprika and salt. Add your chopped almonds, and cook until nicely toasted. Set aside to cool.
3. Bring 1/3 cup of quinoa with 2/3 cups of water to a boil, and then let simmer for 10-15 minutes.
4. Cook your edamame according to package.
5. Mix all the ingredients of the dressing together and adjust flavours to please your taste buds
6. In a salad bowl prepare the greens, then add the quinoa, edamame, and cauliflower mix. Add the dressing to taste.

 

 

 

 

 

SPRING ROLLS

Oh my god guys, I am so excited, I made spring rolls! I did not think I could pull this recipe off, but I damn well did! I am really overly excited about this, per usual as food is the only thing that really makes me excited.

Party in my mouth

I was not even going to try and make spring rolls, I was going to attempt dumplings, but in the grocery store I could only find spring roll pastry and not dumpling shells, so I was like, close enough.  Now, just to clarify, I usually try to make everything at home, but one time I made beautiful dumplings with homemade shells, and they were awful, and weird and like wayyyyyy to chewy, so this time I realized I needed some store bought wrappers.

Now I looked up how to make spring rolls, and I did not like any of the recipes that I found, so I decided I would do my own thing and I really enjoyed the way it turned out!

What you need:

• one package spring roll wrappers
• coconut oil (for cooking)
• 4 small grated carrots (or 2 large)
• 1/4 cup (60 ml) sprouted mung beans (or any type of sprout)
• 1/2 (120 ml) pickled cabbage (I made my own and you can find the recipe on this blog! You can also use store bought or raw cabbage)
• 6 (approx.) bok choy leaves shredded
• 1 tsp (5ml) miso paste
• 1 Tb (15ml) tamari soy sauce
• 1/2 tsp (2.5ml) salt and pepper (please do not leave out the pepper it makes it a billion times better!)

1. Steam your grated carrot, shredded bok choy, and mung beans for 10 minutes or until softened, if you are using raw cabbage you should include it in the steaming, but if you are using pickled cabbage leave it separate.
   

   Ingredients

2. Mix the cooked vegetables with the pickled cabbage.  Add the tamari, miso, salt and pepper to the vegetables and thoroughly mix so everything is evenly distributed.
   

   mix

3. Peel apart some of your spring roll pastry.  Lay one piece on a flat surface, scoop about a one tablespoon sized amount of the filling into the middle of the wrapper.
   

   Wrapper with a scoop of filling

   

   Wrapper with folded sides

    

   Fold the sides across each other, and then fold over the end pieces creating a sealed rectangle, future spring roll.

   

   Future spring roll

4. Heat a frying pan or wok at medium heat with a small amount of coconut oil (or oil of your choice).  When the pan is hot cook the spring rolls until golden on both sides.  When you are cooking the spring rolls it is really nice the veg is already cooked, because then you only have to worry about frying the wrapper.  These are not classic spring rolls but they are 100% delicious so give them a try!
   

   Finished spring rolls!

 

Accidental Eggplant Chips

I had bought eggplant to try and make baba ganoush, but after looking briefly at various recipes I realized it looked a lot harder than what I had thought, so I kept putting it off, leaving my eggplant sitting lonely in the fridge.  I happen to be on a strict budget for food, so with the rest of my vegetables rapidly disappearing, eggplant was one of the only dinner options I had left (that or raw celery). I was too hungry to attempt baba ganoush so I decided to make a roast eggplant sandwich, which would have been great if I had been looking at a recipe for that, however I was looking at recipe for a casserole containing eggplant and many other vegetables, you were supposed to cook the casserole for an hour and a half.  In my hunger stupor I thought since I just had eggplant without the rest of the veg I would try cooking my eggplant for 40 minutes.  It turns out that after 40 minutes the eggplant was extremely wilted and crispy, I thought for a second I had ruined it but after tasting I realized I had made really, freaking delicious eggplant chips.  It turned into a happy eggplant accident. 

• 1 eggplant
• 2 tablespoons oil (30 ml)
• 1 tsp salt and red pepper flakes (5ml)

First preheat oven to 375 F (180 C)

Cut your eggplant into thin strips, lightly oil, add salt and red pepper flakes 

Bake for 40 minutes or until the eggplant is perfectly crispy!