What vegetables await you in our April salads? Cauliflower, peas and leek will be the stars with the red touch of strawberries: find out how to prepare them.
Let’s start with an uncommon use of cauliflower: raw. Have you ever tried it? You will be surprised to discover that it is sweet and has a much more delicate smell than when cooked. It is in fact during cooking that the typical sulphurous smell develops, which often makes cauliflower not liked, especially by children. In the first salad, cauliflower is grated to make a tasty, micronutrient-rich couscous with lots of flavour and few calories.
My Quinoa salad, on the other hand, is perfect for a refill of plant protein. Quinoa is a gluten-free pseudo-cereal that has all 8 essential amino acids (i.e. those that must be taken in with food as they are not produced by our body) and therefore has a very similar nutritional profile to foods of animal origin. Moreover, due to its wealth of other micronutrients, it is considered a super-food whose consumption is strongly recommended as an integral part of a healthy, balanced diet.
Remember to rinse quinoa before cooking to remove saponins, substances naturally present in many vegetables, which may cause irritation to mucous membranes, but are completely eliminated by a pre-cooking wash.
If you only have a few minutes available, see how to prepare Three five-minute salads!!
Cauliflower couscous with Radicchio variegato
carbohydrates 14g for the whole serving
Ingredients for 1 serving
- 80g cauliflower
- 40g radicchio variegato di Castelfranco
- 15g raisins
- 15g shelled walnuts
- 1 teaspoon of toasted sunflower seeds
- 1 teaspoon of pumpkin seeds
- 1 strawberry
- Traditional Balsamic Vinegar of Modena
- extra virgin olive oil
- salt and pepper
Preparation
- Grate the cauliflower with a coarse-hole grater to obtain a couscous-like consistency.
- Wash, dry and cut the Radicchio into pieces.
- Assemble the salad by placing the radicchio on the bottom of the plate and the cauliflower couscous on top; season with salt and pepper, oil and traditional balsamic vinegar of Modena, then complete by adding the raisins, nuts, seeds and finally the strawberry cut into thin slices.
Quinoa salad with leek and peas
carbohydrates 20.11g for the whole serving
Ingredients for 1 serving
- 25g quinoa (weighed raw)
- 40g shelled fresh peas
- 30g leek
- 7g desalted capers
- chopped basil and sage
- sun-dried tomatoes*
- extra virgin olive oil
- salt and pepper
Preparation
- Rinse the quinoa under running water and cook it in 75g of lightly salted water for about 20 minutes or until it has absorbed all the water.
- Put a little oil in a non-stick frying pan and brown the finely sliced leek and peas in it, adding a few tablespoons of water to cook them. Add desalted capers and chopped basil and sage. When the peas are almost cooked, add the quinoa and season with salt (if necessary) and pepper.
- Serve the quinoa topped with a few chunks of sun-dried tomatoes and basil leaves.
Version with gluten of April salads
The recipes contain only naturally gluten-free ingredients, so no adaptation is necessary for their version with gluten.
