Fast Day Recipe - Cucumber Radish Pressed Salad
All about Macrobiotic or Pressed Salads and how to make a Cucumber and Radish Pressed Salad (87 calories). Perfect for fast days of the 5-2 Diet.
Ingredients
- 100 grams radish Peeled and thinly sliced
- 100 grams cucumber Peeled, deseeded and thinly sliced
- 1/2 Lemon
- 1/4 tsp Salt
- 1/8 tsp Red chilli powder
- 1/4 tsp black pepper Ground
- 1/4 tsp Mustard seeds
- 1/4 tsp Cumin seeds
- 3 - 4 Curry leaves (optional)
Instructions
- In a bowl, mix the sliced radish, cucumber and chopped salad greens.
- Add salt, red chilli powder, ground black pepper and massage this well into the vegetable using your hands.
- Place this in a large bowl, and keep a heavy plate on top of this, such that the plate directly presses on the salad. Keep a heavy weight such as a mortar-pestle or a filled water bottle on top of this. Keep aside for a minimum of 30 minutes to a maximum of 2 hours. Ensure that you leave this on the countertop and not in the fridge.
- After 30 minutes, drain all excess water, toss in juice of half a lemon and remove to a serving plate.
- Heat a small pan or a tempering ladle. Once hot, add the cumin and mustard seeds along with curry leaves. Once the seeds crackle, transfer it over the salad.
Notes
If this is not for a fast day, use 1 tsp coconut oil or mustard oil for tempering the spices and curry leaves. You can also drizzle some raw extra virgin olive oil over the salad.
The pressed vegetables have a tangy flavour with a slight crunch from the curing. The seeds add little bites of crunch and impart their nutty flavours to the salad.
If you haven't tried a pressed salad before, I urge you to try it out. You'll end up making these on a fairly regular basis!
This salad makes a perfect Fast Day Salad recipe without any added oil.