Making Friends with Salads

Winter is well and truly over; so it’s time to turn over a new leaf (see what we did there?). With the Aussie sun quickly warming up our days it’s time for us to spend more time outside, enjoy lunchtime a bit more, and best of all, get together with friends and family for those great summer afternoon.

Summer lunches always seem to be dominated with a leafy salad. While we love our greens, there is so much more you can do with a salad. Lettuce forget those days, and make friends with salads (alright, we’ll stop) by wowing your friends and family with this great barley salad with carrot, date and raisin recipe!

 

BARLEY SALAD WITH CARROT, DATE AND RAISIN
Ingredients
300 grams of pearl barley
1 tea spoon of both coriander and cumin seeds. Dry-roasted, coarsely pounded in a mortar and pestle
3 carrots, coarsely grated
40 grams (¼ cup) pine nuts, toasted
40 grams (¼ cup) golden raisins, soaked in warm water for 5 minutes, drained
3 dates, pitted, cut into slivers
Juice of 1 lemon and 1 orange
½ teaspoon of sweet paprika
¼ teaspoon turmeric
1 bunch coriander, coarsely chopped
¼ cup of flat-leaf parsley, coarsely chopped
1 teaspoon of red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil

Method
Cook the barley boiling water with salt for 20-30 minutes or until tender. Drain and transfer to a bowl.

Set the barley aside to cool, and combine the spices with the ingredients in a bowl and toss to mix. Add barley to the mix, toss to mix and season to taste. Your barley salad is now ready to serve!

 

We love this recipe. It’s very citrusy, which is refreshing for summer, whilst the spices add a lot of flavour. Barley is high in protein and low in fat; and offers a really nice texture over leafier salads. We also recommend adding a little chilli for a bit of zing, and to serve chilled!