You can make your salad alluring, nutritious and mouthwatering !!!!!
There is a general feeling among people that salads are boring, bland are tasteless. Predominantly Indian men are not very keen, when it Comes to salads. Many of my patients makes a face when I advice salads in diet regularly.
What can we do to get rid of this unfounded belief? The answer doesn’t lie in laborious or strenuous effort. We can effortlessly make salads attractive, colourful and alluring and which has a combination of taste, texture and nutrition.
Three aspects which can make a vast difference to food are colour, texture and taste. Presentation can make food appealing. Nice, fresh, green, and crisp salad, full of life and health should be made part of our daily meal. Fiber content in the ingredients will help prevent constipation and cholesterol.
Combine smooth papaya, crunchy apple, grainy kiwi or fig, soft avocado, nutty almonds, fibrous carrot, juicy melons, leafy lettuce and flowery hibiscus, you will find the result is amazing. Wide range of veggies, fruits and nuts with a dash of pepper and lime can turn into a scrumptious and colourful salad. Incorporate contrasting colours like red (tomatoes, red bell pepper, apple, pomegranate), yellow (pineapple, yellow bell pepper,sweetcorn),orange (papaya,carrot),green (lettuce, kiwi, green apple), peach (honeydew melon), white (cucumber), blue(berry), black (olives) and brown(nuts) .
A perfect blend of sweetness, sourness, tanginess and crunchiness will give excellent results. While the fruits can infuse the sweetness, nuts can impart the crunchiness. Olives will not only look good, but give slight sour taste, which will get the gastric juice flowing. When you are cooking chickpeas, don’t forget to save some for adding to salads.
Herbs generally have strong taste and should be carefully added according to individual preferences. Spices like hot chilies and pepper, can make the salad very yummy, when added in small amount. Avoid using ready made salad dressings , as they are loaded with salt and calories and will never give the taste of fresh ingredients, instead you can opt for a dash of olive oil, lemon, pepper and or shredded cheese.
It is not an easy task to convince your little ones, or for that matter your husband to feast on salads. I use this secret method to make kids have salad, just to get them in to that habit and also to develop their taste. I take my kids and their friends for swimming or for a game, after the long haul, when they come back starving and thirsty, I keep a large plate of tantalizing salad on the table. (never make the mistake of asking them to eat it). You can pretend that you are heating or serving other food, while they gorge on and empty the plate. Delay the main course or the salad will stay there untouched !!
Grown up men are not very different from the kids, take them for exercise or a long walk, keep salad on the table, never ask them to eat it and the plate will be empty in no time.
I will wrap up with a simple kiwi salad, which I made today. The green coloured Kiwi is quite unique in it’s taste and appearance and adds a dramatic tropical flavor to the salad. It is a very rich source of Vitamin C and is available in most of the cities in India. The tiny black seeds speckled gives the sweet and sour fruit a slight grainy feel.
Dr. Anita Mani
Infertility& Surrogacy Specialist at Gift IVF Centre
Infertility& Surrogacy Specialist at Gift IVF Centre