Seriously Good Salads #Review
Gaile Wundke
13th August 2019
Seriously Good Salads by Nicky Corbishley is a fabulous book with 75 delicious recipes to suit all tastes. It is divided into seven different sections from ‘Mighty Meat and Poultry’ through to ‘Fruit-Based Salad Superstars’ all designed to change the way we think about salad. You only need to flick through a few pages to realise that these salads are so much more than lettuce, tomato and cucumber, they are vibrant, nutritious and of course, packed full of flavour!
As a keen cook I own many recipe books and over the years I have found that there are two things that can let a book down, one is over complicated recipes and the second is that the finished product doesn’t look like the picture in the book. However, I have read every recipe in this book and they are all very straightforward with a clear list of ingredients and all beautifully photographed. My challenge was to see if I could produce something that looked just as good!
The recipe I chose was Hasselback Honey Carrot Salad with Chickpeas and Feta. I loved the simplicity of this recipe, but like all the recipes in the book, the end result certainly didn’t look or taste simple! However, I did have to make one small change to the ingredients – I wasn’t able to source red radicchio, so to mimic the colours as much as possible I bought a bag of mixed leaves.
Nicky gives a great tip to help hasselback the carrots which was to lie each one between two chopsticks to prevent the knife going all the way through, although if you don’t have chopsticks, two wooden spoons would also work. Once the carrots have been prepared, they are brushed with oil, seasoned, drizzled with honey then into a hot oven for approx. 30 mins until lightly browned and tender.
Whilst the carrots are cooking, I heated some olive oil in a frying pan then added a drained can of chickpeas, 2 teaspoons of smoked paprika and some salt and pepper. These then fried for around 5 minutes until slightly crispy.
That was all the cooking involved, simplicity itself, all that was left to do was arrange the leaves on a plate, drizzle with a little olive oil, then top with the carrots, chickpeas, some crumbled feta and a few toasted flaked almonds, it really couldn’t have been easier.
Seriously Good Salads is a great little book to have in your collection, if you love salad as much as I do then it’s a must have and I’ve no doubt that many of the recipes will very quickly become firm family favourites.
*Nicky kindly gifted Taste Cheshire a copy of her latest book in exchange for an honest review of her book, we stand by all our comments though, don’t believe us, try them yourself, you won’t be disappointed.