So as I mentioned in an earlier post, I picked up some wild rice as I thought it would be interesting to try {seeing as my family consumes a lot of rice}. The thing is once you get that ‘new’ product home you have to think of something to do with it… Don’t you just hate it when you have a ‘new’ ingredient in your pantry, you make something once and then you never use it again!
That’s why I picked up the wild rice, because I thought that even if I make one dish with it. It will be used up as I could serve it just like plain rice with other meals {and Mr Moo loves rice as a snack or a lunchtime ‘fill-up’ in his bento box}.
I’ve been checking out Smaggle and the salad-a-day challenge she created through the hashtag on Instagram {#smagglesaladaday}. And I thought that I would draw some inspiration from some of the images and create something out of nothing {by combining random but flavoursome ingredients that I had on hand}.
I started with the dressing – because well that’s often the easiest and simpliest part of a salad. I combined apple cidar vinegar with olive oil, added a little seeded mustard and seasoned. Looks pretty good in the image hey?
I then thought – gee, I have a lot of snowpeas and snowpea sprouts in the fridge which I better use up before they go off and hence they went into my salad too!
If they were fresher I just would have chopped and put them into my salad. But seeing as they were a day or two old, I thought I would chop them, blanch them and then refresh them in cold running water. And I feel that that made a good difference.
Jamie Oliver would be proud of my waste not, want not approach to getting the most out of my fresh produce.
Now I could have just stopped there {with the addition of a little parsley and thinly sliced red onion}. And it would have been a delicious vegetarian salad option – but I am breast feeding and incredibly hungry at the moment, so I added a protein component.
WILD RICE SALAD
1 cup of wild rice
200 grams of snowpeas
200 grams of snowpea sprouts
1/2 a red onion
1/2 a bunch of flat leaf parsley
1/4 cup of apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup of olive oil
1 tablespoon of seeded mustard
400 grams of prawns
2 cloves of garlic
sea salt and cracked black pepper
Place your wild rice into a pot of salted boiling water and cook as per the instructions. When there is 2 minutes remaining, add the snowpeas. Then drain and refresh everything in cold running water. Set aside.
Whisk together your dressing of vinegar, oil and mustard, season and then pour over your rice and snowpeas. Add the snowpea sprouts and red onion and then toss to combine.
Grill your prawns with a little olive oil and the crushed garlic and then place on top of your salad.
Do you make salads often? Are you following the hashtag #smagglesaladaday ? Tag me if you decide to make this – I’d love to see it on Instagram.
