A Cherry Tomato, Cucumber & Carrot Salad With Pumpkin Seeds

After all the feasting and sweet stuff that is part and parcel of the festivals and festivities these past couple of months (Onam, Navarathri and Diwali), I’m not understating things when I say that all I’m craving most of the time is simple and uncomplicated food. For the next few weeks that is going to be the mantra behind my cooking, even more so because after that we’re off an a short vacation where I know I’m going to be spending some of time as a food tourist sampling all that the local cuisine there has to offer.

 

After we moved to Kochi, I have been toying with the idea of planting a kitchen garden as we have a small backyard. When we moved, it was a huge patch of overgrown weeds and we got someone to help us clean it up. He discovered a small tomato plant in the weeds and planted in one of my empty pots, and the next thing I knew was that I had this huge bush full of flowers which turned into cherry tomatoes. Then three weeks down, the plant suddenly started drying up and now I’m left with a load of cherry tomatoes on my hands.

I’m in the mood for a salad for lunch so I decided to make one with whatever else I had on hand. So that meant a couple of cucumbers and some carrots. I also had a pomegranate and I’m someone who believes that adding a little pomegranate (either as fruit or molasses) to simple salads usually takes them up a notch, whether it the aesthetics or for the taste.

If you ask me, most salads in general don’t need recipes, and the simple ones definitely don’t so there’s no recipe in this post.

The reasons I posted this at all was because –

1)I felt that a part of my cherry tomato harvest needed to be immortalized here (An inadvertent bumper harvest given that I’m not a very good gardener is worth celebrating),

2) It turned out very colourful and I thought it photographed well, and …..

3)I needed to post, didn’t have the time to sit and write a long post, didn’t want to cook and this seemed to fit the bill!

Everyone knows how to toss a few salad ingredients together with salt, pepper, oil and lime juice. Here’s what I used for this one – halved cherry tomatoes, julienned carrots, and sliced cucumbers (I cut them with a cookie cutter because I thought they looked pretty that way). My dressing was a little olive oil, lime juice and pomegranate molasses mixed together. Just before serving my salad, I poured the dressing in and seasoned it with salt and crushed pepper. I tossed the salad a couple of times and last, I added a small handful of toasted pumpkin seeds and that’s it!

Bon Appétit.