Tuna, Brown Rice & Green Lentil Salad

This post is a variation on a theme, salad of grains/pulses + fresh vegetables + onion + herbs, therefore it looks pretty similar to my couscous salad and chickpea salad recipes, but just different enough to keep things interesting as well as healthy! This recipe makes a pretty big salad, enough to keep you going for lunches at work for the week, or to take to a BBQ at a friends place. When I make it for lunches I make it really lean, no dressing or oil, that way it lasts longer and when I pack my lunch for the day I can either keep it super lean or put a blob of mayonnaise/dash of olive oil on it.

 

The rate determining step in this salad is cooking the brown rice and lentils. Both medium grain brown rice and French/Puy green lentils take 30 minutes to boil - so I put them in the same pot. I might be committing some kind of terrible lentil sin doing this, but it seems to work perfectly every time. Yesterday I bought some green lentils and the miss-informed sign about the bulk bin said you must soak overnight before cooking-total rubbish!

 

Tuna, brown rice and green lentil salad

 

1/2 cup uncooked brown rice

1/2 cup uncooked french green lentils

3 sticks of celery
3 spring onions
1/2 a red onion
1 red capsicum
2 tomatoes (seeds removed)
1/2 a zucchini

large bunch of parsley
20 mint leaves
small handful of coriander leaves
large tin of tuna

Place the lentils and brown rice into a saucepan with cold water,bring to boil and simmer for about 30 minutes. Testing the brown rice to confirm when it is cooked

While the lentils and rice are cooking, it's time for your meson plus!

Finely dice the onions, vegetables and herbs.

 

then add the drained tuna, I buy SAFCOL "responsibly fished, pole and line caught tuna" based on the 2011 Canned Tuna Greenpeace Guide.

 

 

Once the rice and lentils are cooked, drain and rinse with cold water. Allow to cool then add to the rest of the salad.

 

 

And you're done

 

 

Today's lunch, tuna, brown rice & lentil salad with a boiled egg, some black olives and capers!

 

Vietnamese Chicken Salad

This is by far one of my all time favourite recipes! It's pretty close to Luke Nguyens Char grilled pork neck with vermicelli noodles, classic street food fare. Instead of pork neck, I used chicken thighs. In the past I have made with pork neck and also using rump steak, both worked really well. I prefer chicken thighs over breasts because; (1) because they taste better; (2) they are fatty and juicy and hence (3) more forgiving when BBQ'ing

As I've said previously, what constitutes "free-range" according to standards in Australia is not always what I consider to be "free-range". Since moving to Western Australia, I've started buying Mt Barker free range chicken. My favourite thing about Mt Barker Chicken is their website clearly outlines their free-range standards, which includes how they define access to free range -

"At least 50% of the building sides must open to allow chickens access to the free range area for new farms, and RSPCA Approved Free Range Standards for existing farms. Birds must have access to the range as soon as they are reasonably feathered and at the latest between day 21 - 28."

Which is far more generous than the free-range standards suggested by other regulatory organisations. At the end of the day, short of driving out to the farms and having a look for myself, you have to take a leap of faith and chose a chicken supplier if you want to eat chicken. So I vote with my dollar and buy Mt Barker free-range chicken!

Before I begin with the recipe - a quick note on the salad dressing: because it's easier, I usually eat my salad with a little fish sauce and a squeeze of lime. If you want more dressing, I recommend making a nuoc chum dressing, I found a recipe for a really good one here. Try to make it a few hours or a day before to help the flavours mix and the garlic to pickle a little.

Vegetarian Note: If you want to make this salad with tofu, I recommend using fresh tofu with a nuoc chum dressing made with vegetarian fish sauce.

Alright, now for the cooking!

First thing to do is marinate the meat. Luke recommends marinating 2 hours to over night, but last night i only managed an 1 hour, which still worked really well.

 

Meat Marinade (straight from Luke)

6 white part spring onion, finely sliced,pounded into a paste
2 tablespoons sugar (I used brown)
1 tablespoon honey
4 tablespoons fish sauce
1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
2 garlic cloves, finely diced
2 tablespoons vegetable oil

In a mortar and pestle pound the whites of the spring onions, chopped garlic and sugar

then add the fish sauce, honey, pepper and oil

 

I made it using 4 chicken thigh fillets roughly diced. I don't worry too much about how I cut the meat because I use metal skewers, meaning I can thread a single piece of meat two to three times regardless of its dimensions.

 

 

Second toast your peanuts in the oven or under the griller/broiler. I only say this because I keep forgetting until right at the end and it drives me crazy! Keep an eye on them because they burn easily - roughly chop when done.

 

Third cut up all your salad ingredients

lettuce

spring onions

mint

coriander

red onion

carrots

tomatoes

cucumber

Fourth, put the meat on the skewers

Fifth soak the vermicelli in hot water for about 5-10 minutes (I buy them already bunched in individual serves to save tiny pieces of noodle flying across the room) test them to see when they are done, then drain and rinse with cold water.

Sixth put your chicken on the BBQ to cook. I cook mine on a Weber baby Q. I cook them pretty slowly on a low heat to prevent the marinade from burning and to give the fatty chicken thighs time to render down.

Seventh while you are waiting for the meat to cook, assemble the salads, palace the vermicelli on the bottom and then add the salad and herbs

 

Eighth, once the chicken is cooked, you are good to go!

finish off your salad with roughly chopped toasted peanuts, chilli, a squeeze of lime and a dash of fish sauce (or nuoc chum if you so please)

 

Seriously, if I had chose one food to eat for the rest of my life, I think this would be it...

Roasted Cauliflower Salad - 1st attempt

One very memorable food experience in Canada was visiting the Rocket Bakery in St John's, Newfoundland after my hike to Signal Hill. I had a black bean burrito with a side of roasted cauliflower salad that was out of this world (my phone was flat, otherwise I would have included it in my Canadian highlights post). It was so good I am determined to add it to my cooking repertoire. I wrote down the ingredients I could recognise, red onion, cherry tomatoes, garlic, mint, capers and roasted cauliflower and googled it when I got back to Australia.

The only recipe I could find was posted by The Shiksa in the Kitchen, apparently it's an Italian recipe ! Who knew! Mine is pretty close to hers, except I added mint + tomatoes and I didn't have any olives... she has a very detailed step by step instructions about how to cook the cauliflower that I did not strictly follow. It turned out really tasty, but not quite the same as my Rocket experience. I added way more herbs which made it almost like a low carb tabouli and the cauliflower in mine was quite soft. At Rocket it was brown and carmelised from roasting but still firm, almost crunchy. I'm going to blame my crappy oven and my slightly overcrowded roasting trays. Maybe next time will put the oven on a really high heat, or maybe grill it and not add the minced galic (because it will most certainly burn). My first attempt was as follows...

preheat the oven to 180 degrees C

 

Chop half a cauliflower into small, even sized pieces.

 

 To reduce the amount of crumbly cauliflower bits at the end, a good trick to cutting your cauli is to start with your knife cutting down into the solid steam and once you reach the bulbus part of the floret, gently twist your knife (by rotating your wrist) to allow it to break apart into more cohesive bunches. 

 

 

mix the florets in a bowl with 2 cloves of minced garlic and  a generous splash of olive oil. Lay flat on some oven trays and place in a 180 degree C oven

 

while the cauliflower is roasting cut up the rest of your salad ingredients.

 

1/2 a red onion finely diced

2 tbl capers

2 tomatoes deseeded and diced

small bunch of parsely finely chopped

10-15 mint leaves finely chopped

juice of 1/2 a lime

 

Like the Shiksa says, the parts of the cauliflower in contact with the oven tray caramelise the most efficiently. I checked on them every 10 minutes, each time giving it a little stir. In the end, I cooked mine for about 30-40  minutes.

 

 

mix it all up with the juice of 1/2 a lime and you're done!

 

Asparagus & Broccoli Salad

I've been living in up in Calgary and I'm about to go visit a friend in the little town of Medicine Hat! I've been eating out most evenings so I decided to make a massive salad for lunch to increase my veggie intake. Canadian food can be quite fatty and meaty and so this salad was a nice green change. Canadians are massive fans of raw broccoli in Salads, but I like to give it a light steam to make it easier to digest...

Asparagus & Broccoli Salad

10 sticks of Asparagus

a handful of broccoli

mixed salad leaves (I bought a might of baby spinach and "spring leaves")

a handful of cherry tomatoes cut in half

2 tbl toasted sesame seeds

3-4 tbl cooked brown rice (or couscous/burghul/quinoa) - i had brown rice left over from a previous meal

2 small spring onions sliced finely

2 eggs soft boiled

chop the broccoli into small pieces, steam for 2 minutes, add the asparagus and steam for another minute then plunge them into cold water to stop the cooking process

The easiest way to cook a soft boiled egg is start with your eggs at room temperature. Put the eggs into a saucepan of cold water and gently bring to a boil. Simmer the eggs for 3 minutes and then quickly drain the hot water and plunge the eggs into cold water to stop the cooking process.

Then assemble your salad!

I made a dressing out of 1 tsp mayonnaise, 1 tsp dijon & 2 tsp balsamic vinegar

Couscous Salad

I just got back from camping down near Margaret River. Before we headed off I made a big couscous salad, it's one of my favourites and very versatile. I make it in a saucepan as a kind of one pot wonder, it allows you to brown the nuts/cumin seeds and then the residual heat of the saucepan makes sure the couscous cooks properly.

CousCous Salad

1 cup instant couscous

1 cup hot water

small handful of pine nuts (or slivered/flaked almonds)

1 tbl sultanas

1 tsp cumin seeds

1 tbl olive oil

3 sundried tomatoes

fresh parsley, mint and/or basil

boil the kettle

In a saucepan, add oil, cumin seeds and nuts, on a medium heat until the nuts start to partially brown

then add sultanas, very soon they will swell up

when this happens immediately add 1 cup of hot water

be careful the sultanas burn is you leave them too long

once the water boils, add 1 cup of instant couscous, give one quick stir, take it off the heat and cover with the lid.

After 3-4 minutes, take off the lid, quickly fluff up the couscous, then replace the lid

fluffing at this stage is important otherwise the couscous sticks to itself and is all lumpy

After 5-6 minutes,  take off the lid, again fluff up the couscous, taste a few grains to check if they are cooked. It should be done, but if not, replace the lid and wait a few more minutes. 

add some extra tasty things like...

sundried tomatoes, fresh herns

1 tbl finely diced onion

I made a garden salad too. If you don't have it with a garden salad, you can add deseeded cucumber/tomato, diced red capsicum and celery.

Fetta is also a really nice addition

This couscous goes really well with grilled haloumi, roasted vegetables, roast lamb and many other things...

Tuna Coleslaw

I apologise for my silence... I'm in the middle of a rather early midlife crisis - I'm feeling super excited about my new path - just struggling to organise my life how I'd like it to be. I have been taking a few photos of my dinners and tonight I'm featuring my tuna coleslaw I made last week. It's funny, because I make up these dishes, usually while walking around the supermarket and even during the cooking, only to google them and discover that I'm not so original after all... oh well, I guess there are some basic food pairings like tuna and mayonnaise that many people love to play around with. So this recipe is a mixture of three of my favourite things, coleslaw + waldorf salad +  tuna! I LOVE my mandolin slicer/grater kit. I recommend them to anyone who likes salads, stir fry's and sliced potatoes on the BBQ. They make salads super quick and easy. I bought mine from a display in a shopping centre - best $35 I ever spent on a kitchen appliance

Salad

1 carrot thinly grated

shredded cabbage equal to carrot volume

1/2 an apple julienned green apples are nice, but I used a sundowner

 (to cut the apple I use the thin slicer on my mandolin then cut them into thin strips)

2 sticks young celery

1/4 red onion cut with same method to apple

2 handfuls of toasted walnuts

Tin of tuna (in spring water for the health conscious)

small handful of sultanas

mint to garnish

It might takes really nice with way more mint - perhaps next time

dressing

1 tsp mayonnaise

1/2 tsp dion mustard

2 tsp olive oil

2 tsp apple cider vinegar/lemon juice

to be honest those dressing quantities are entirely made up, But the ratios are pretty spot on for how I like it. If you are watching your weight omit the olive oil and 1/2 the mayo. I go easy on dressing because I hate to drown my coleslaw. I prefer to eat small amounts of full fat as opposed to more of low fat/diet options. So I eat real egg mayo, which is like 80% fat, but I just don't eat a lot of it. Fat free mayo freaks me out, I can't understand how they can make something that is supposed to be made from egg yolk and oil - 97% fat free. I think they shouldn't be allowed to call it mayonnaise the same way you can't call butter/oil blended spreads "butter" they are called "spread". true story.

Chickpea Salad

Dried chickpeas are a staple in my pantry, they are highly nutritious, a great substitute for meat and incredibly delicious. I understand why people prefer tinned, but I chose dried for several reasons

1. They are cheaper
2. They cost less to transport and store, therefore better for the environment
3. You can easily control the volume you cook 
4. I think they taste better

They make your humus fluffier and your salads fresher. It isn't that difficult to think, “hmmm I’ve been thinking about making a bean salad tomorrow, how about I soak those chickpeas”. It's a good habit to get into, quite often I will soak some chickpeas and decide the next day what to do with them.

Chickpea Salad

½ cup dried chickpeas soaked over night

1 tomato deseeded

1 cucumber deseeded

¼ of a red capsicum

1 stick of celery

¼ green apple

Fresh chilli

1 spring onion, green and whites OR a few slices of red onion

A mixture of fresh herbs including parsley, mint, coriander, dill, basil

Juice of 1 lime/lemon OR vinegar

Extra virgin olive oil

salt/pepper

1. Put the soaked chickpeas in a saucepan with cold water (NO SALT) and bring to boil, let it simmer for ~10 minutes. Some chef recommend you remove the scum that forms through boiling process, like you would for a chicken stock but I’m unsure what difference it makes and do it if i remember.
2. While the chickpeas are cooking, finely chop all other ingredients. Chopping everything finely is the most important step because it means every mouthful contains a mix of all the tasty vegetables and herbs. I deseed the cucumber and tomato because it keeps the salad crunchy - but I do eat the seeds!
3. Keep an eye on the chickpeas, after ~7-8 minutes take one out, slice it in half and have a nibble. They are cooked when the knife cuts through them easily and they are soft and fluffy inside. It may take up to 15 minutes depending on the chickpeas and how long you soaked them for. When they are cooked, strain and run under cold water to cool.
4. Combine all ingredients! You can wait for the chickpeas to get cold, or make the salad warm, it comes down to personal preference and personally I enjoy both. but if you want it to last a couple of days, put the cooked chickpeas in the fridge and only assemble when they are cold.

This salad is really nice on its own, sprinkled on a garden salad or with fish or chicken. Sometimes I add a small tin of tuna if I feel the need to up the protein

Modifications…

This recipe is highly adaptable and easily modified. I’ve added a sprinkling of Mangal Chat Masala to todays salad, but it is by no means essential.  If you don’t have all these ingredients the essential components are 1) Some kind of onion, 2) fresh herbs and 3) tomato. You can also make this as a 4 bean mix salad, in which case use tinned 4 bean mix.

Warning: it is possible to overdose on chickpeas, they are very high in fibre, which for people like me with sensitive stomachs, it can get a bit hard wearing on your insides. So if you are new to chickpeas, take it slow and listen to your body – if it tells you it’s sick of chickpeas, put down the fork!