Cucumber Peanut Salad

This salad contains spinach, cucumber, and roasted peanuts. I used agave syrup in place of honey to make the salad vegan. I found the peanuts were especially tasty due to being cooked with garlic.

Light Pasta Salad

To make this pasta salad, I first soaked a handful of cashews in warm water, before blending them with a little water, one small clove of garlic, a bit of nutritional yeast, and half of a teaspoon of Dijon mustard. I then cooked the pasta, along with the carrots and broccoli, which I did not want to eat raw.

While the pasta and vegetables were cooking, I rinsed some tinned corn, sliced olives, chopped yellow and red sweet peppers, chopped cucumber, and chopped parsley. I rinsed the pasta, broccoli and carrots in cold water to chill them, then mixed them with the remaining vegetables, the cashew sauce, black pepper, salt, and olive oil.

Obviously the vegetables can be changed to taste – I meant to add some frozen peas to the pasta just before draining, but discovered I had run out – as the main thing about this dish is that it has a very light sauce instead of a heavy mayonnaise one that is typically found in pasta salads.

Italian Vinaigrette

When you enjoy cooking it’s sometimes easy to forget about the simple recipes, like this salad of lettuce, cucumber, carrot and sweet pepper with classic Italian vinaigrette. It can serve as a summer lunch or dinner, or as a side.

Cucumber Laban

Cucumbers in yoghurt also made an appearance in my meze. This dish is similar to tzatziki, but the addition of mint changes the taste.

 

Hiyashi Chuka

I tried this dish of cold ramen noodles using vegetable ingredients: vegetable stock in place of chicken stock, and fried tofu in place of chicken. I also used light miso instead of a red because that is what I had. I left off the tomato and included courgette/zucchini, sweet pepper, and rehydrated shiitake mushrooms. Finally, I didn’t use ramen noodles at all but udon.

The recipe didn’t provide instructions for cooking vegetables, so I par-boiled the carrot and courgette, then pan-fried them, along with the mushrooms and sweet pepper, with ginger. I deglazed the pan with sake. Both the sauce and the vegetables had a lot of flavour.

Oil-Free Strawberry Vinaigrette

I was inspired by this recipe, but I made several modifications. First, I cut down the recipe significantly, as I only wanted dressing for two salads. Second, I didn’t have apple sauce, which is a common oil substitute. Instead I soaked chia seeds in water, to give the dressing some bulk.

I served it over a cucumber and parsley salad.

Fresh Lettuce Wraps

I meant to make fresh spring rolls, but the wrapping material I’d purchased was too thick. So I settled for wrapping in lettuce around blanched sprouted mung beans, glass noodles mixed with soy sauce, carrot, sweet pepper, cucumber, basil and mint.

The peanut dip was really tasty and was made by mixing the following ingredients in a saucepan: one chopped shallot, about one cup of peanut butter, juice from one lime, two minced cloves of garlic, 1 tablespoon of maple sugar, salt to taste, 1 tablespoon of soy sauce, 1/2 teaspoon of red pepper flakes, 1 tablespoon of frozen grated coconut, 1 tablespoon of olive oil, and enough water to allow me to blend the ingredients. I simmered it for about five minutes until the ingredients were all mixed and the excess water had evaporated.

Fatoosh Revisted

This is an extra post because I’ve written about fatoosh before. The hot weather has me reaching for some familiar favourites. Now is a good time to remember all the wonderful summer dishes I haven’t eaten for months. I’ve been making pita bread to eat with all sorts of dips, and this is how I used up one leftover bread, for lunch.

Oi Moochim

In this dish, cucumbers are tossed in a spicy sauce.

Spicy Cucumber Salad

This cucumber is prepared with Sichuan pepper, chilli oil, garlic, vinegar, salt and sesame oil.