Hello and welcome back to another salad post. At our home, salad is a daily staple, yup that's right, I make a huge bowl of salad for dinner, everyday, for 365 days! This requires improvisation on a larger scale. Thank goodness, the kids love salad too (or maybe I enticed them!) and I make it a point that they eat a certain amount of raw food every day, even if it means a few cherry tomatoes, cucumbers or fruit bits in their school lunchboxes, so they enjoy something healthy and have a variety to choose from.
Black-eyed beans have a truckload of benefits include improving digestion, preventing anaemia, lowering blood pressure, increasing folate intake, and promoting skin and eye health. And this particular salad is something I make at least once a week, but not the same style, I play around with veggies in season, and keep the beans, onions and tomatoes as a base. This salad is quite versatile and is a wonderful addition to any barbecue or picnics. Throw in some boiled pasta or wild rice for variety and it becomes a meal in itself! Make sure you have dry black eyed beans at home, as this gives the freshest flavor (soak the dry beans overnight in plenty of water to speed up the cooking process). Enjoy this salad and don't forget to tag #saffronbowl in social media with your own creations.
Ingredients
400 grams, cooked black-eyed beans
1 onions, chopped
1 medium tomato, chopped or 1 dozen cherry tomatoes, sliced
1 cucumber medium diced
1 dozen green olives in half (optional)
1 yellow/ green bell pepper, chopped (optional)
Dressing
1⁄4 cup chopped cilantro/ coriander leaves
2 tbsps lemon juice
2 tbsps extra virgin olive oil
3⁄4tsp Himalayan salt/rock salt (or as per taste)
1⁄2 tsp crushed black pepper
For this recipe I use freshly cooked black eyes beans. Soak a cup of dry black eyed beans the previous night in plenty of water. Use a pressure cooker and place all the pre-soaked beans with more fresh water and 1 tablespoon of salt. Cook this in the pressure cooker until the beans are tender. If you feel you have an excess amount of beans, these freeze quite well, but ensure that you freeze it with the cooking water. Strain the beans and now they are ready to go into salad.
In a large bowl, mix together the black eyes beans, onions, tomatoes, cucumber, olives and bell peppers.
Place all the dressing ingredients in a bowl of a covered jar and shake/ mix them up well. Once you are ready to serve it, pour the dressing over the salad and toss it all well. I prefer having this while the black eyes beans are still warm.
Tip- Mix up the veggies with the beans as the base for your salad. You can also chop up lettuce to make a large batch of this salad for guests, but make sure you double the quantity of the dressing. Boil up some pasta and mix it up with this salad, this is quite a favourite with kids. If you are really pushed for time, use canned black eyes beans instead.
