Kale, Carrot & Edamame Salad with Sesame Lime dressing

This beautifully colourful salad is bursting with flavours and nutrients from massaged kale, carrot, red cabbage, edamame beans and sesame seeds. You can feel you are eating light energy and your body is being nourished from top to bottom as my fiend Donald so wonderfully put it.

I call this salad "Happiness in a bowl" because just looking at it makes me smile :D and when I eat it I know I am winning at life lol :D

The dressing made from toasted sesame seed oil, lime, ginger, maple syrup, garlic and tamari adds zest to it and really brings this salad to life and crowns the work.

When you cook a lot you’ll inevitably end up with odd combinations of left-over food and a mish mash of raw ingredients. Out of this exact chaos this beautiful master piece was born.

I got to admit I was aiming for a peace sign when taking this photo...Just forgot that one important line...Oh well radioactive works just as fine :D At least the ingredients are glowing!!! #foodphotographyfail

I was staring at the contents of my fridge in an attempt to figure out how to make best use of the raw ingredients that were there, kale, tomato, cucumber, couple of spring onions, red cabbage & carrot. I really wanted to use up the kale and red cabbage as thought they wouldn’t last much longer, but how, was the big question. I figured out that as they are both from cabbage family they should go together. Carrot is cabbages best friend and therefore good companion for the mix.

I decided on a salad. Firstly, I removed the stems of the Kale (nobody likes the stems…) before chopping it and giving it a good old massage for couple of minutes with slightly oily hands. Lucky kale! When you show some love to your cruciferous greens it will help to make them softer and gentler in flavour.

My Kale that is getting more massages than me...No, actually that is a lie, I get lot of massages too. Me and Kale are both very lucky <3

Next, I peeled the carrots and grated them in a food processor and then decided to throw in the cabbage too using the same grater plate as I used for my carrots (to save time) and it worked like magic! I combined them all together and added some left-over oriental dressing on top from my fridge and OMG I was blown away. I was so chuffed with myself that I texted Damean to let him know that I had accidentally created something really lovely and how he would be in for a treat when he got home. But he never got to taste the first version as I ate it all…ooops…

I decided to make it again with added improvements of edamame beans for protein, toasted sesame seeds and modifying my oriental dressing recipe to be more suited to these flavours and created a winner.

When Damean got home I served it to him in a coconut bowl that I had just purchased and boy oh boy did that make the whole difference.

Suddenly it felt that instead of being in a grey rainy England we were transported to somewhere tropical, where we were connected to the nature and being good at life, nourishing our bodies.

Difference a bowl and colourful salad can make…

I would love to hear what is your favourite accidental left-over creation?

Did you try out this creation, if so I’d love to know how it turned out?

Tag me @lustfullyvegetarian or use a #lustfullyvegetarian and I’ll love to see your version of it

Until next time

Sirle

xox

When in doubt, always use coconut bowls!

The Rcecipe

Kale, Carrot & Edamame Salad with Sesame Lime dressing

Serves 4-6

(Salad: Prep 10mins Dressing: Prep 3mins )

For the Salad:

200g Kale

4 Large Carrots

250g Red Cabbage

1 cup edamame beans

2 tbsp Toasted black sesame seeds

1. Remove the Kale stems before roughly chopping the kale

2. Pour a drop of sesame oil into your hands and rub them together and start massaging the kale for couple of minutes, till kale becomes softer and reduces in size. Make sure you don’t overdo the massaging as you don’t want to end up with soggy limp kale either!

3. Peel and grate the carrots in a food processor

4. Grate the red cabbage using the same blade as you used for your grated carrot

(if you don’t have food processor, just chop the cabbage very finely)

5. Mix together kale, cabbage, carrot, edamame beans and toasted black sesame deeds

6. Top with dressing

Sesame Lime Dressing

4tbsp Toasted sesame seed oil

2tbsp Maple syrup

2tbsp Tamari

1 juice of lime

2 cloves of garlic, micro grated

1 heaped tsp ginger, micro grated

1. Ada sesame seed oil, maple syrup, tamari, juice of 1 lime, micro grated garlic and ginger into a blender and blend on a high speed for 20sec (or if you don’t have a blender add all the ingredients to a jar and shake vigorously for 20sec)

Notes:

· This dressing really makes the salad so don’t skip it

· The dressing gets better as the flavours develop and can be used on other salads as well. Make a double batch and store it in the fridge. Will keep at least a week.

· Natural separation might occur but, in that case, just shake the dressing before serving