So today Roop and I woke up and realised it was late, we had nothing in the kitchen for brunch and we were starving! We nipped over to Unicorn in Chorlton, our fave organic supermarket, got a whole load of stuff and raced back home. Because we wanted to eat quickly to quieten our grumbling tummies we decided to do a quick lunch of soup and salad (plus other condiments, sauces and pickles)… Voila!
The soup is an organic red lentil and pepper soup out of the can… We love it because its so tasty and flavoursome, plus you can add to it and its not too thick so you don’t feel full. I’m not too bothered about eating canned goods, as long as they are organic – that way you know its good quality. We accompanied this with wheat free bread and organic butter. But the piece de resistance and true star of the show was the salad, and I’m going to tell you what’s in it and how I went about preparing it so you can enjoy it too or fall back on it when your in a rush.
I chose ingredients I thought would go well together. Last Wednesday, my colleague Priya brought in a salad for lunch she made at home and it was delicious! She had chosen her ingredients really well, thinking about incorporating different textures and contrasting flavours of sweet, salty and spicy. This inspired me! so I dedicate this post to her! And i hope this blog will inspire her to guest post here one day…
I thought that I wanted a mixture of sweet, salty, earthy, leafy, crunchy, spicy and a smooth finish. So I chose the following ingredients…
ALL ORGANIC for absolute optimum health:
Leafy lettuce (3 big leaves) – shredded into bite-sized pieces
1 tomato – diced
Cabbage – the one you use for coleslaw (harder, crunchy leaves) – a few slices
1 leek sliced
A sprinkling of mung bean sprouts
1/4 red pepper thinly sliced
2 tofu sausages – lightly pan fried to activate the flavours, then chopped into chunks
Artichoke hearts quartered (these are out of a can)
Fennel – a few slices
Pine nuts and peanuts lightly pan roasted
Walnuts hand crushed
Dressing:
Organic French dressing – shop bought
A squeeze of lemon
Ground pepper
Quite a few shakes of Tobasco sauce
Mix all the ingredients together by hand or using salad spoons, add the dressing, mix some more and serve! You can always sprinkle with some Parmesan too! I ate mine with some Mauritian mango pickle and slices of buttery toast, plus my soup of course!
