Broccoli and halva salad
and no, that's not a typo...
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Savoury and sweet bring harmony to salads and particularly when brassica oleracea are concerned. This family of vegetables – colloquially known as brassicas, which encompass broccoli, kale, cauliflower, gai larn, bok choy, cabbage, turnips, brussels sprouts etc – tend to have a slight earthy bitterness which responds enthusiastically to a hint of sweetness. This week’s recipe emphatically proves this theory.
This week
Cook a tiger salad or lao hu choy (which translates to “tiger vegetables”). The fresh and tart salad is actually from the CELERY chapter of Tenderheart, but was recently shared in Food & Wine. It is a bright and herbaceous dish, and minimal cook. The original recipe uses green tea noodles, but substitute with soba or rice noodles.
Prefer no-cook? This new blitz-the-eat chilled zucchini, lemon and basil soup (gift link) is for you. Be brave with your citrus and herbs - they power this dish.
I’d also like to share this summer fave - sesame cucumber and avocado salad (gift link). A beautiful light meal, or bulk it up by eating with soba noodles or rice.
Eat something other than tomatoes and zucchini? Try this winter warmer. It’s a gratin, but unlike any other. It’s a sweet potato gratin with cheese and gochujang tomato sauce. Here, the tangy sauce brings a welcome lightness to a dish that might otherwise feel heavy and stodgy. Americans, keep this recipe in your back pocket for Autumn (maybe Thanksgiving?)
Listen to my chat with
and on their Everything Cookbooks podcast.It’s so special to be out book shopping and to spy a review of your own book! Thank you to the incomparable
for this endorsement of Tenderheart at Books Are Magic, Brooklyn Heights.
This week’s recipe
Charred broccoli with quinoa and halva
© Hetty Lui McKinnon for To Vegetables, With Love
The genius of this salad – and you will agree with me once you taste it – belongs not to me, but to British chef and cookbook author Gill Meller. Gill’s most recent book Outside, dedicated to the joys of cooking and eating outdoors, offers a kale with halva and raisins salad that is a symphony of earth and sweet. It’s a recipe that I noticed during my first flick through of the book but I hadn’t tried it until last week, when I saw my friend Kris Warman, who writes the excellent cookbook review blog Shipshape Eatworthy, post about it on Instagram.
Gill writes “I find kale irresistible, but occasionally it likes something sweet to carry it over the finish line. That where the halva comes in – and what a win, what a win!”
What a win! A huge, massive, shutout victory. When I took my first mouthful, I was immediately reminded of another salad, one from my archives! Gill’s recipe was evocative of one from my first book Community – sweet sesame broccoli with edamame and quinoa, a personal favourite of mine which I think often took a backseat to all the other smash hit broccoli salads in that book. That particular recipe features blanched broccoli, edamame and quinoa tossed with a maple-laced tahini sauce – it’s savoury, with an emphatic sweet edge. In the book, I describe it as a mashup of Asian and middle eastern flavours.
So, this salad is a mash up of a mash up. I’ve taken the key elements and textures of my Community broccoli salad and remixed it with Gill’s brilliant trick of adding halva for sweetness. I have made a few changes to the original recipe – the broccoli is charred rather than blanched, which adds smoky complexity, and I’ve replaced the edamame with salad leaves. I’ve also reduced the sweetness of the original dressing, to make room for the halva.
A note about halva – rich and nutty halva is made from combining ground sesame seeds (tahini) with sugar. It is fudge-like, with a crumbly texture. Often, halva is flavoured with rosewater, chocolate, peanut butter, cardamom, pistachios, caramel etc. If you’re unsure, opt for a plain halva for this salad. During testing, I actually used a nougat flavoured halva and then a peanut butter one from Seed + Mill (who also make my favourite tahini). Both worked beautifully.
Serves 4
2 cups vegetable stock or water
200g (1 cup) quinoa
extra virgin olive oil
2 small heads (560g / 1.25pounds) broccoli, cut into florets
2-3 handfuls salad leaves such as baby spinach, baby arugula/rocket
2 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds (white, black or a combination)
60g (2 ounces) halva, crumbled
Sesame dressing
2 tablespoons tahini
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 clove garlic, grated
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
1 tablespoon sesame oil
Pour the vegetable stock or water into a medium pot and bring to the boil. Add the quinoa and once it comes back to the boil, cover, reduce heat to medium and cook for 10-12 minutes until all the liquid has been absorbed. Turn off the heat and let it stand for 10 minutes - it will fluff up and dry out. Uncover and transfer to a large salad bowl or platter and allow to cool while you prepare the rest of the salad.
Meanwhile, heat a large grill or frying pan on medium high. Add 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil and the broccoli florets, working in batches if needed (avoid overcrowding the pan), and cook undisturbed until charred on bottom, about 2 -3 minutes. Toss and continue cooking until the broccoli is charred in spots, just tender but still very green, another 2-3 minutes. Remove from heat and continue cooking the remaining broccoli, if needed.
In a bowl, add the tahini, soy sauce or tamari, garlic, rice vinegar and sesame oil. Whisk until smooth. Add 1 tablespoon of water and whisk again. The consistency should be pourable. If it is too thick, whisk in a little more water.
To quinoa, add the salad leaves, broccoli and dressing. Toss to combine. Top with sesame seeds and halva and serve.
1) this salad is blowing my mind...no surprise as usual
2) loooove books are magic!!!! the coolest
yummmmm