Silk Road Summer Salad
This salad is so basic it is barely even a recipe, but there you have it. The ingredients are very few, so it's pretty important that they be as fabulous as possible. It's a good excuse to go to the farmer's market.
You need:
3 medium tomatoes so amazing you would marry them if it were legal in your state (I used red, orange, and yellow heirlooms)
3 bell peppers as sweet as candy (I used red, orange, and yellow BC hothouse peppers
1 cucumber of blissful perfection
A bunch of cilantro to make 1/3 of a cup when chopped very fine
The same amount of mint, also chopped very fine
Rice wine vinegar
Sesame oil
Salt & pepper to taste
Chop all the vegetables and place them in a large bowl. Toss them with the finely chopped herbs. Make a dressing of 50 mls of sesame oil and twice as much vinegar, and toss the salad with it. Serve. Feeds 4 hungry adults, with leftovers to serve over quinoa for lunch the next day. I served this last night along with rice and a Kazakh lamb and Napa cabbage stir fry, and it was fucking excellent.
It might be just as good, although very different, if you swapped parsely for the cilantro, basil for the mint, balsamic vinegar for the rice wine vinegar, and olive oil for the sesame oil. And then you could serve the leftovers on noodles.
You need:
3 medium tomatoes so amazing you would marry them if it were legal in your state (I used red, orange, and yellow heirlooms)
3 bell peppers as sweet as candy (I used red, orange, and yellow BC hothouse peppers
1 cucumber of blissful perfection
A bunch of cilantro to make 1/3 of a cup when chopped very fine
The same amount of mint, also chopped very fine
Rice wine vinegar
Sesame oil
Salt & pepper to taste
Chop all the vegetables and place them in a large bowl. Toss them with the finely chopped herbs. Make a dressing of 50 mls of sesame oil and twice as much vinegar, and toss the salad with it. Serve. Feeds 4 hungry adults, with leftovers to serve over quinoa for lunch the next day. I served this last night along with rice and a Kazakh lamb and Napa cabbage stir fry, and it was fucking excellent.
It might be just as good, although very different, if you swapped parsely for the cilantro, basil for the mint, balsamic vinegar for the rice wine vinegar, and olive oil for the sesame oil. And then you could serve the leftovers on noodles.