Tahini sauce salad- low fat!

Salads have become much more of a big deal for me in recent months. By salads I’m talking huge bowl salads, soup accompaniment salads and hot salads.... gone are the days when salads were only served in summer!

I love hot food, there is something so satisfying about a plate of hot home cooked food, but I also appreciate the virtues of raw and uncooked foods and try to eat raw veggie sticks and salads when I can. It’s a simple fact that regardless of how healthy a food is, it will lose some of its nutritional value during the heating process. So, for me a hot salad is a great compromise... the benefits of raw veggies whilst satisfying the ‘hot’ meal side of things.  I nearly always eat my spinach raw in what ever dish I make, partly because raw spinach is so much more bulky and visually substantial that wilted cooked spinach. You eat with your eyes, right?

Back to the point of this post....it’s not all about the salad but the dressing! The dressing is a low fat twist on a traditional tahini dressing and I credit Susan over at Fat Free Vegan for her great recipe.

The salad itself is up to you... I threw together a mixture of roasted and raw veggies...  iceberg lettuce with raw grated carrot and cucumber chunks, along with some leftover chickpeas and roasted cauliflower and courgette that I chopped small and sprinkled with a little salt and pepper and allowed to roasted whilst I blended the dressing and prepped the rest of the dish. 

Assemble your salad and then go crazy with the healthy tahini dressing until your hearts content! This could also be used as a dipping sauce- reduce the water by half when you blend together.

Recipe: Low fat tahini dressing

Ingredients:

1/4 cup chickpeas
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/2 cup water
1 tbs tahini
2 tsp soy sauce
1 tbs ground chia
1 tbs nutritional yeast
1-2 garlic cloves- crushed
2 tsp fresh ginger (or 1/2 tsp ground)
black pepper to taste

Method:

Blend all ingredients together until very smooth. Dressing will store in the fridge for up to two weeks.

I served mine over a raw-cooked combo salad!

For further guidance on making gluten free choices please see this post.

For tips and info on recipe measurement conversions, ingredients, substitutions and the methods behind how I do things.... check out my 'baking tips' tab at the top of the page.