vegan superfood salad - made at home
I take a restaurant dish, buy the ingredients, and have a go making it at home.
why make a superfood salad at home?
Well, first and foremost, it looked easy. That’s a good reason. Another reason to make a vegan superfood salad at home is because part of the fun of cooking at home is trying new dishes. And as someone who isn’t a fan of salads, this is certainly something I have never made before. I tried this superfood salad during my lunch review at the Bank House Hotel in Bransford and really enjoyed it. Full of goodness, beautiful ingredients, and a healthy meal.
The Bank House made it easier by publishing the recipe during lockdown. What they didn’t do was to give the quantities of all the ingredients. The beauty of this, and of superfood salad, is that you can determine ingredient quantities according to your taste. Leave some out, add others. It is a great dish with which to experiment.
Below is my story of making the superfood salad. Further down, Faithful City Food follower, Amba, also made this at home and she kindly sent in photos and details. You will see from the photos Amba took that her salad looks a lot better than mine!
buying the ingredients
A visit to Tesco in Warndon for my shopping. I don’t often use Tesco, but the staff were very friendly and helpful – apart from the woman on the till who was as miserable as me.
They had all the ingredients, except that I didn’t find any asparagus. That said, I didn’t look too hard as it is out of season and I didn’t expect to find any. I bought the usual broccoli rather than tenderstem. The quinoa I found near the rice. Never bought quinoa before. Feel like a modern man now. I used three red chillies and ignored the requirement for a red pepper. I added pine nuts as I love them.
Warning. The list of ingredients doesn’t state the quantities of all items. This is fine in that you can add ingredients to suit your taste. However, I had a lot of ingredients left over and what was used was enough for two large portions, lunch the next day and still there was some left. I can’t tell you what I spent on the ingredients. Well, I could, but I won’t. To be fair, had I bought one quarter the amount of ingredients, it would have cost very little and been a very reasonably priced meal.
preparing the ingredients
preparing the vegetables
The easy bit. The red onion, the tomato and the chillies were finely chopped. The spinach and coriander were washed. The pomegranate seeds (Tesco didn’t have whole pomegranates) and pine nuts were simply removed from their respective packets. How easy is that?
cooking the ingredients
I toasted the pumpkin seeds. The soya beans were simmered for 7 minutes and drained.
The quinoa was supposed to be washed. I forgot. Thus the measured amount of water was absorbed quickly by the dry quinoa and a burnt pan incident was narrowly avoided. I bought two bags of 300 grams but decided in the kitchen that just one bag was needed. Trust me, 100 grams would have been enough. Quinoa goes a long way!
making the lemon sherbert dressing
Easy peasy. My god, I’m a chef!
mixing and serving the superfood salad
A big bowl and bung in what you want. First in was the avacado relish, followed by some baby spinach leaves. Too many – I’ll use less next time. Then just add the ingredients according to your taste and finish with the lemon sherbert dressing. The pomegranate seeds were particularly tasty and gave the dish more colour.
I served the salad onto a plate and added the broccoli and served with crusty brown bread. The Bank House used a bowl which would have been better aesthetically than the plate.
what did we think of the superfood salad
The salad was lovely. Not as lovely as the version we had at the Bank House, but very nice nonetheless. There was far more than we needed, but the quantities can be adjusted next time. Making this dish at home was a success, and it would make a great meal in the summer. At the Bank House it is a large starter. I made it as a main course. I think it is more a starter than a main, but the bread helped.
Taste:
Bank House 9
Me 7
Consistency:
Bank House 9
Me 7
Presentation:
Bank House 10
Me 5
superfood salad made at home by Amba
Faithful City Food follower, Amba, saw the recipe here and decided to give it a go. She started by halving the quantity of ingredients. Then she went off recipe slightly by grilling the asparagus with a drizzle of virgin olive oil and toasting the pumpkin seeds in soy sauce.
Amba said she, “loved that I just grabbed handfuls of ingredients and mixed them all together, enjoyed estimating what would be a good amount and it all tasted delicious! Yum!”
You will see from the photos below that her superfood salad was far better presented than my rather poor attempt!
read more about the superfood salad
Check out my Bank House lunch review or read about this salad in my best dishes in Worcester blog post.
Visit the Bank House website.
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