Warm Green Salad with Rapeseed Oil Dressing

Warm and Green Summer Salad

A quick and easy summer salad with many a luxury touch.  The method here is simply blanching the veg and hopefully maintaining alot of their goodness.  You certainly don’t want to cook veggies until they lose their crunch, that is utter madness.  Veggies should be alive and crispy when eaten!

This salad was so green, it was jumping out of the bowl (if that makes any sense at all!)  All the veg here are seasonal, from the farm (bar the Avocado which I think flew over from Mexico), the basil came from the bush on the windowsill and even the oil and salt are Welsh.  It is so great to eat something made from produced sourced locally.  We have really struggled this year to gather together good, organic produce.  But the sun is out today and all is blooming, hopefully the next few weeks will see more harvesting and beautiful produce up for grabs.  Even our rainbow chard in the garden is looking good for the plate.  Amazing what a little sun can do!

The dressing is made with Blodyn Aur Rapeseed Oil, a real find in Wales.  Great folk who use the cold press techniques of olive oil making to produce a stunning rapeseed oil.  Real food heroes who enrich our lives with beautiful oil.  The flavour is very buttery, nutty and smooth and the colour is the brightest gold.  This oil also has bags of Omega 3 essential fatty acids, which are great for us.  If you live in Britain, I hope you can track some down.  It is like no other oil I have come across.

We also used some local sea salt flavoured with celery.  Halen Mon are a family business making salt from the pure water of the Menai Straits on Anglesey, we can seem them from the kitchen window of the Beach House Kitchen and have never tasted salt this good.  Really.  It’s amazing salt.  See our Halen Mon post here.

We always have a good stock of seeds, but if you don’t have sesame or flax, any seed will do really.  Although poppy seed would be a little strange.  We like adding flax to dishes because it is good for the digestive system.

A opposed to our normal raw food fare, this warming (I wouldn’t go as far as cooking!) of the salad really brings out the flavour of the dressing.  We have also recently been told that it is not such a good idea to each French beans or broad beans raw.  They contain things that may do you no good.

Rapeseed Flower

PS – A handful in our recipes is probably about a cup (in our hands!).  Maybe yo have different names for these beans, fava etc.  I hope you know what we are talking about here!

The Bits

Salad – 1 ripe avocado (chopped), 3 handfuls of spinach, 1 small sweet onion, 3 handfuls of chopped french beans, 2 handfuls of podded broad beans, 1 stick of finely sliced celery, 1/2 handful of chopped basil leaves, 2 teas sesame seeds, 2 teas flax seeds.

Dressing  – Freshly squeezed juice of a lemon, 3 tbs great oil (olive or we used local rapeseed oil, it has a lovely buttery flavour), 2 cloves of crushed garlic, 1 teas organic honey, cracked black pepper, sprinkle of sea salt (we used Halen Mon celery salt).

Do It

Gather all your broad beans, french beans, onion, place in a bowl/pan and pour over just boiled water.  Leave to sit for a few minutes.  Make the dressing, add all ingredients to a small bowl and whisk vigorously with a fork or small whisk.  Drain you veggies and add to a large salad bowl (or any good looking receptacle), mix in your avocado, celery and basil leaves (gently does it) and pour over and stir in your dressing.

Warm Green Salad with Rapeseed Oil Dressing

Serve

Warm, with smiles and summer joy.

We Love It!

All good local fare; seasonal veggies that are so full of flavour and the vibrant dressing adds a lovely rich citrus kick.  A bowl full of the joys of these lands.

Foodie Fact 

Unlike all other vegetable oils, cold pressed rape seed oil contains a natural balance of omega 3, 6 and 9 oils, making it a great source for these essential fatty acids. ‘Good oils’ are essential in bodily functions, including aiding cholesterol reduction, and maintaining a healthy heart.  Omega 3 is a rare oil, that can be difficult to include in our diet.  Rapeseed oil also contains Vitamin E, a powerful anti-oxidant.