Crunchy Thai Salad with Green Coco Dressing (Raw)

Crunchy Thai Salad with Green Coco Dressing

So here we go again! Raw Earth Month at the Beach House Kitchen will see a huge influx of tasty salads and juices, its inevitable and we love ’em all!

An amazing friend of the BHK (Dodee over in Hawaii – see magical ‘Sacred Backyard Blog‘ here) said of raw food, ‘I’ve made the decision to feel good all the time!’ and how true that is.  Jane and I are buzzing around feeling ace, it’s day five I think and we are fully over our ailments brought on by a fairly intense ‘treat’ time in Dublin(Guiness-fest), lots of birthdays in a row (wine and cake-fest) and meals out (plenty of great rich food).  Our bodies are thanking us now and our energy levels are through the roof.  We are also enjoying the naturally slower life, with no lights and electrical appliances at nighttime.

Jane enjoying the slower life – Glynllifon Estate, Caernarfon

I had some fairly strong caffeine withdrawal symptoms on day 2, pounding headache and no energy whatsoever.  After a good sleep, this passed.  Its amazing how the body adapts so quickly to things, good or bad and how sensitive you become when eating this wonderful raw stuff!  Happy days indeed.

Salad wise, we had some left over thai curry paste hanging around the  fridge that demanded a dish.  This salad has all the flavours of Thailand and more, when we’re raw we really like to make a fuss over our salads.

Jane and I love Thailand and on rainy afternoons in Wales we sometimes wonder how Bangkok is and our favourite little coast towns; how are those street food stalls doing without us!?  How is a our favourite juice guy near Kaosan Road?  How is the coconut curry man in Prachuap Kiri Khan?  At times like this, the tastebuds are going mental and they need something with the incredibly pungent and fragrant aromas of THAI.  Its unmistakable and I’d almost consider going back just for the food alone, but there are at least a 101 other countries I’d like to visit before I start re-tracing my steps in the global sand.

Nutritionally, this is a beast of a dish; with sweet potato, sesame seeds, peanuts, avocado, spinach, etc etc etc, the list goes on and with a punchy/ creamy dressing to finish things off, its a real main event salad.  When you decide to eat raw vegan, there is very little you can eat that will do you any harm, that’s one of the beautiful things about the lifestyle, pile it on a plate and know that its all good.  No baddies included.

This salad boasts quite a list of ingredients and was mainly dictated by what we had in, but you can very happily have a play with this one; veggies can be chopped and changed and any nut will do here!

Talking of chopping, if you can get them into thin, baton-like shapes, they work best here. The dressing clings to them and they look the part also.

The Bits

Salad – 1 carrot, 1 stick celery, 1/2 cucumber, 1 red pepper1/2 sweet potato (all chopped into thin batons), 1 cup rocket (arugula to some), 2 spring onions (finely chopped),1 red chilli (finely chopped), 2 cups spinach (finely chopped), 1 cup cherry tomatoes (halved), 1 cup beansprouts (we used homesprouted mungers aka mung beans), 1 cup basil leaves, 1/2 avocado (scooped out with teaspoon), 1 lime (zest and juice), 1 tbs black sesame seeds, 1/2 cup raw peanuts

Dressing – 2 cup organic coconut cream (the creamier the better), 2 tbs green thai curry paste, 1/2 lime (zest and juice), 2 teas white wine vinegar, 1 handful basil leaves, 1 teas sea salt

Do It

Chop all hard veggie ingredients into long, thin batons leaving the avocado, nuts and basil leaves to the side for topping purposes.  Add all the rest of the ingredient and the hard veggies to a large salad bowl, mix in half of the dressing, combine well and sprinkle over the topping ingredients.

For the dressing, simply blend all together in a food processor.  The texture should be thick and ‘cling-y’ to get sticky all over on the salad.

Serve

Not chilled, but not quite room temperature, this is a good gauge for our salad temps.  To cold and you don’t get the flavour, to warm and you have wilting issues.  We always have a nice surplus of salad dressing in a bowl on standby.

CRUNCH! and ZING!

We Love It!

Getting back into raw vegan ways is a serious blessing for body, mind and soul.  We are so lucky to both want to lead this type of lifetsyle, if one of us wanted chips everynight it just wouldn’t be the same!  This salad is a far from chips as you can get in the food world.  It’s a proper zinger!

Foodie Fact 

Sesame seeds are outrageously healthy, some say  they are the healthiest food in the world.  These wonder seeds have been with us for many thousands of years and are thought to originate in India, having been mentioned in ancient Hindu texts.

They are very rich in minerals, especially copper, iron, calcium and zinc.  So ‘open sesame’ and pop some in your diet soonXXXXXXX