Summer salad-Crispy Spinach salad with tomato, cucumber, Bandel cheese n carrot
The way this salad hits the taste buds is unreal. Gushes of
saliva rush to mix with the crispy egg-coated spinach, the honey-mustard
dressing, the onions, the carrots and the cheese as you munch on-oh! How can I
tell you how unreal is that? N I gulped n gulped until the bowl stared looking
empty after 5 minutes and I knew I was getting full, but I couldn't stop. I
mean people are not supposed to get full by eating salad, right? Especially be
eating so much of salad but then I was taken-literally taken n owned by this
amazing salad. Oh reader if you have read so far I am only thinking when you
will eat this salad and write me about it! It is gonna be so much fun listening
to you. In fact when I was eating it I thought I would probably skip the main
menu if this salad is being served just before that. Yes it is just that good.
Its monsoon here, not yet the end of summer however and in the
vegetables market now-a days I get to see fresh bunches of small spinach. Well
I am not a spinach fan anyways but the few ways that I like to eat them is when
I transform them into crispy spinach in my kitchen. Mostly how I do is I coat
the spinach with a light batter of eggs n corn flour and I deep fry them, it
takes around a half a minute for each batch to go crispy and its yummm… it
takes a bit of patience however.
When I started thinking about creating this recipe I first
thought the crispy spinach and then I add tomatoes, carrot ribbons, cucumber,
slightly golden cashew nuts for their crunch and flavor, the red onion, the
lime, honey-mustard dressing and a very special cheese. It is called Bandel
Cheese and it is a local cheese here and it mostly comes from the place called Bandel-hence
the name. the Bandel cheese is a smoked cheese, the texture is soft n crumbly,
it is an un-ripened cheese, they are really tiny, they are like small patties
and they will be mostly shorter than the length of you little finger. The first
thing you will notice when you bite into the cheese is the smoky flavor. In
fact there are 2 kinds of this cheese-plain which are white in color and
smoked, brown in color. It is quite aromatic when it is fresh and softly
crumbly.
Now with this cheese I do something special, the cheese is
quite salty, to give it another layer of flavor I make a little caramel and I
brown the cheese slices in the caramel and it happens almost in seconds, after
that I splash a bit of balsamic vinegar over them and sometimes a pinch of red
chili powder if I feel like it n it becomes amazing. In this salad I use that
cheese like this. Now I will tell you about the recipe…do make this salad when
you get your hands on some fresh spinach and hopefully you will love me at the
end of eating that. If you do not have Bandel cheese just go for a soft crumbly
cheese like feta, you can even go for ricotta but then let your imagination run
free, let it make you happy. Bon Appetit.
For The Recipe: you
will need
200 gm of fresh spinach
leaves (prefer small if available)
2 Bandel cheese
1 medium egg
3-4 tbsp of corn flour
1 small cucumber sliced in
thin round circles
1 medium red onion halved
n sliced
1 medium red tomato halved
n sliced
1 small carrot, with a
potato peeler, make ribbons by peeling it along the length
1 lime
6-7 cashew nuts, slightly
golden in oil and broken in pieces
3-4 tbsp of Honey-mustard
dressing (use ready-made or make your own)
Salt
Pinch of pink rock salt
Freshly crushed black
pepper
1tbsp of vegetable oil,
reserved from the oil in which the spinach is fried
1 ½ -2 cups of vegetable
oil
1. let’s start with the cheese,
then cut the vegetables, then we will fry the spinach and then we will assemble
the salad. So slice each bandel cheese into 3-4 discs, then in a frying pan
place 1 tsp of sugar, sprinkle some drops of water on them for the heat to
evenly distribute, on a medium flame let them go to dark caramel stage, then
place each disc on that caramel, then turn them over after 10 seconds, you will
see they have browned and become softer, then splash 1 tbsp of balsamic vinegar
on them, as it dries take them off the pan.
2. Peel the carrot and
then keep peeling to get the carrot ribbons. Prepare the other vegetable as
said. Sprinkle a little lime juice over the sliced onions.
3. Wash the spinach, pat
it dry with a cloth, then in a vessel break the egg, whisk lightly to combine,
in another bowl add the corn flour with 1 tsp of water, mix it then add it to
the egg mixture, add a pinch of salt and freshly ground black pepper in the
batter. The batter should be runny n light; you can add more corn flour and a
bit water to get to that consistency while increasing the volume. Now heat the
oil in a wok, let the oil heat up on a medium flame for 4-5 minutes, don’t make
the oil go smoky, we need it below that temperature. So now in the batter dip
some of the spinach leaves and first one leaf in the hot oil carefully to test
how hot it is. It should take about 10-15 seconds on each side for the batter
to crisp up and attain a golden color. Once it is attained fry the spinach
leaves like this in small batches, in every batch place about 6 -9 leaves
depending on the size of the wok. When the spinach is done sprinkle little salt
over them, now let off the heat and place the cashew nuts in the oil, let
them attain a slight golden hint then take them off.
4. Now with the
honey-mustard dressing add the lime juice and mix it, add 1 tbsp of the oil in
which the spinach is fried and mix well with the honey-mustard dressing. Now
place everything in a big bowl excepting the spinach and add the honey-mustard
dressing, pinches of salt and the pink rock salt, freshly ground black pepper
and mix until everything is coated. Then lastly add the crispy spinach. Taste
and adjust the seasoning.
And guess what you are done!
Now dig in and let the flavors explode!
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