Persian Salad with Olives and Pomegranate

I've got an end-of-year work potluck tomorrow, so I made one of my favorite potluck dishes. I adapted the recipe from the recipe for "Shirazi Cucumber &  Pomegranate Salad" in Silk Road Cooking: A Vegetarian Journey by Najmieh Batmanglij.  This is an AMAZING cookbook - full of Persian recipes plus recipes from everywhere in Asia from the Mediterranean to the Pacific. So many cookbooks just focus on the Middle East or India/Pakistan, but this one has some really unique recipes from Iran and nearby countries in Central Asia too.

The original recipe is a salad of cucumbers, onions, olives, and pomegranate seeds, with a dressing that has a pomegranate base.  The key taste here is the contrast between the olives and pomegranates, but I didn't want to put off anyone who was unfamiliar with the texture of pomegranate seeds or was turned off by pieces of raw onion.  So, I left out the onions and pomegranate seeds, and added chopped tomatoes, making it look a little bit more like the more familiar Jerusalem Salad that's typical to Middle Eastern cooking.  And I added chickpeas to upgrade it to entree salad level.

Persian Salad with Olives and Pomegranate 

Salad:

2 cucumbers
3 medium tomatoes
1-1/2 cups pitted green olives
1-1/2 cups cooked or canned chick peas

Dressing:

2 cloves garlic, peeled
1 tbsp. pomegranate concentrate
1 tbsp. lime juice
1 tbsp. honey
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. black pepper
1/4 tsp. red pepper flakes
1/2 cup olive oil

1) Peel the cucumbers, then scoop the seeds out of the cucumbers & tomatoes.  Scooping the seeds out is easy - just cut the cucumber lengthwise and scrape them out with a spoon. Cut the tomato across the center and do the same thing.

Or you could just buy seedless cucumbers and save a step.

2) Mix together the cucumbers, tomatoes, olives, and chick peas.  I don't like the taste of canned olives, so I bought the Taamti brand, which is refrigerated.  I've also used Kvuzat Yavne brand, which comes in jars - both are Israeli brands and kosher, and best of all, they're already pitted.  I cut the olives in half.

3) Now for the dressing - the key ingredient in this dressing is Pomegranate Concentrate, which is just what it sounds like - a concentrated pomegranate juice. It's sold in Middle Eastern groceries, or you could make your own by simmering pomegranate juice to make a thick reduction.  The brand I used is Sadaf, which has a nice sweet taste, and is also kosher.  Other brands that sell this are Ziyad and Sultan.


The original recipe called for sesame oil, but I left that out this time - it does add a more complex taste combo, but I wanted the tang of the dressing to really shine. I also increased the amount of honey and garlic, two ingredients you can't have too much of.

I love juicing limes (and lemons) - gives me an excuse to use this little gadget whose name I can't remember.  Gets the smell of the garlic cloves off my hands too.

4) Blend all the ingredients together - a blender gives the best consistency, but you can use a whisk (just crush or mince the garlic first).  I used my Magic Bullet, which is my favorite electronic gadget that I initially made fun of my husband for buying after he saw the infomercial. 

5) Mix the dressing through with the salad.  It's a good idea to make it a day ahead so the flavors can meld while it's sitting in the fridge.

6) You can eat the salad on it's own, or on a bed of greens - arugula's peppery taste compliments it nicely.

Eating better, a little bit at a time

I realized that a good chunk of my Facebook posts are about food.  Food I cook, food I buy, and more often, food that my husband cooks, because he's a lot more organized than I am.  I've always liked cooking, but I have trouble finding the time to do it.  If I could live in a cooking show, where the ingredients just show up on the counter, peeled & chopped, and the dirty dishes just magically disappear, I'd cook a lot more. 


When I had more money I bought a lot of premade foods - take out, mixes, and frozen.  After my first son was born, I ate nothing but hot pocket sandwiches, granola bars, and other things I could eat with one hand.  Then my second son was born, just as my first was entering the preschool picky-eating phase - for years our home menu was dominated by macaroni & cheese, more granola bars, and melted cheese sandwiches.  We're vegetarians, but the kids wouldn't eat vegetables. Kid #2 wouldn't eat fruit either.  With both of us working full time, there were more boxed foods, more frozen pizzas, more snacks to eat in the car, more seasoning mixes that we could pour over rice and pasta.


Then a few things changed: 1) We couldn't afford to keep buying the premade stuff 2) We read Michael Pollan's book In Defense of Food.  Now, I hate reading blogs that are all "I eat nothing but natural/organic/pesticide free/raw/vegan/low carb/low fat etc etc etc and it changed my life and I'd never ever go back".  Pollan's book didn't turn my life around, but it got me thinking about the chemicals I'm putting into my family's bodies, and the amount of food garbage we're generating.


So... we're trying to eat more real food - cooking from scratch, buying organic when it's cheap enough, and gardening.  It's nowhere near 100% -child #2 still doesn't eat fruit or vegetables (more about him later), and there is no way on earth I'm going to swear off Little Debbie Swiss Rolls or Diet Coke.  But each little step makes a difference - I do what I can, which is better (and cheaper) than not doing anything at all.  So that's what this blog is about - a vegetarian family trying to be more vegan, trying to be more organic, trying to be more "from scratch", and enjoying food.  Sometimes doing it well, sometimes not so much.  Because that's how life and food is.