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Thinking Outside the Lettuce Head

Ayurveda identifies 6 Tastes by which all foods can be categorized: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, pungent, and astringent. Ideally one should have a mix of all of them, when one is in good health. Lately my husband has seriously been exploring this field and I have taken this as a task: making food to serve as medicine.

It is so easy to get into a salad boredom by mixing the same old lettuce and tomatoes...and that's where I found myself for a while. The salad I am submitting for the contest is a beautiful balance of the above listed tastes, apart from being nutritious, tasty and pleasing to the eye.

I thought of thinking outside the lettuce head- and here I came up with a different salad that turned out excellent- and oh, so colorful! All of the ingredients are available at the produce section of any large grocery store. Even better, try your luck with local farmer's markets to assure freshness and quality. This recipe is a healthy, low fat, low calorie, gluten free

Ingredients

Ingredients:

Radicchio- half head
1 Cup Cauliflower florets
1 Cup Sliced carrots
1 Cup Sliced yellow bell peppers
Small bunch arugula or watercress
Small bunch of chives
1 tablespoon Pumpkin seeds

Olive Oil Sauce:

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
pinch of salt
pinch of ground black pepper

Instructions

Method

Roughly chop the radicchio head.
Blanch the cauliflower florets and the sliced carrots for about 3 minutes. Cool.
Mix in the radicchio, cauliflower, carrots, sliced yellow bellpeppers, chopped chives and argula/ or watercress.
Season with olive oil sauce
Garnish with pumpkin seeds and serve. Season to taste with salt.
To make the Olive Oil Sauce, mix in the oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper.

Recipe submitted by Adelina Srinivasan