Crunchy Carrot Citrus Salad

Here's a refreshing salad with carrots and lemon juice

You'll need 5-6 carrots, peeled and grated. I like the match-stick size grate.

Lemon Juice: 2-3 lemons

Pepper

Salt

Ginger: 2" piece peeled, slivered fine

Green Chillis: devein and deseed any kind if you want to make it milder. if you can handle the heat go ahead and use as it. Mince fine.

Cumin seeds: 1 tbspns roasted.  Add about a 1/2 tspoon oil to a pan and when hot, add the cumin seeds and they will turn golden brown.

Combine all the ingredients except salt. Add salt just before serving.

Makes a great filling for pitas and tacos as well.

For further flavor you can crush 8-10 mint leaves and add to the salad.

garlicky greens

This is a real easy go to recipe you can use with any leaft green you have on hand. All you need is:

Garlic Cloves: 6-7. Slivered not minced.  You can increase the aty if you like it to be more garlicky.

Curshed red chilli flakes: 1-2 Tbspns. Again you can use more or less depeding on your taste

Salt: preferably any coarse kind

Olive Oil: 1 tbspn

Heat oil in a flat wide pan. Add garlic and crushed red pepper and saute until garlic changes color. Add in finely chopped greens and salt and saute until cooked.

The only adjustment required to the recipe is the cooking time which depends on the kind of green leaf you have. Spinach ( if frozen, thaw and squeeze dry), fresh baby spinach, take only about 5-8 mins to wilt while the heady greens like kale, mustard, methi,collard, daikon greens ( muli patta), chard etc will need longer cooking time.

I like adding toasted seasame seeds to finish off the dish. Just take 2-3 tbspns of white seasame seeds and dry roast until  fragrant and golden in a pan. You can use crushed peanuts as well.

 To make this a more substancial side dish, you can saute sliced onions, leeks before adding the greens.