This will be the first recipe I’ve shared on the blog, so I’m really excited that you’re here! Sam loves cooking and so I often leave it up to him to plan our weekly meals, but I really fancied falafel this week and decided I’d like to have a bash at creating my own salad recipe. Unfortunately this doesn’t involve homemade falafel – that’s for another time! This salad dish is for when you want something quick, nutritious and packed with flavour & texture. I love my meals to have contrastive elements to them, and for this dish I decided to create a cool and refreshing leafy salad to be enjoyed alongside a hot ‘straight-out-the-pan’ fried medley. The thing I love most about this recipe, is that I had a rough idea of what I wanted to cook, but I noticed we had some green beans that were crying out to be eaten in the fridge, so I whacked them in the pan too and I feel this dish really wouldn’t have been the same without them. I hope you enjoy the taste as much as I enjoyed the process 🙂  

Nutrients Spotlight – 

Here are some of the nutrients you get from 100g of jackfruit, as per your recommended daily allowance (RDA): 

Serves 4.

Ingredients:

For the salad –

• 1 bag of salad leaves
• Half a 340g jar of pitted green olives
• A handful of sun-dried tomatoes
• 3 portions of pre-cooked beetroot
• 16 falafel balls
• 1 tub of hummus

For the stir fry – 

• BBQ sauce
• Paprika
• Salt & Pepper
• 410g tinned jackfruit
• 2 Peppers
• Green beans

Method:

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees celsius, and cook the falafel for around 10-15 minutes. While it’s cooking, wash the salad leaves and pop them in a big bowl. Chop up beetroot, sun-dried tomatoes and olives, then add all three to the salad leaves. Mix everything together – the oil from the tomatoes provides a subtle dressing.

Take the falafel out of the oven, and leave it to cool down before adding to the salad.

Drain the tin of jackfruit and add to a frying pan. Dowse in BBQ sauce, paprika, salt and pepper. Turn the heat right up and cook the jackfruit for 5 minutes.

Chop the bell peppers into strips and add to the frying pan. While you’re frying the jackfruit and peppers, top & tail the green beans, add them to a microwave-proof container of water, and blast them for two and a half minutes.

Add a splash of water if the BBQ sauce begins to stick, and when the beans are softened, drain them before adding to the frying pan. Ensure the jackfruit, peppers and green beans are evenly coated in the BBQ & paprika sauce.

When the stir fry is piping hot, take it off the heat and you’re ready to serve up. Pile half your plate with a scoop of cold salad, and the other half with the steaming stir fry. Then dollop cool hummus over the top, to bring it all together.

Enjoy! Let me know if you’ll be giving this one a try.

Alice

xoxo