
I have had a few people tell me that they’ve seen my blog, and that I post a lot of rich food (a nicer way of saying calorie-heavy and unhealthy food, I presume) and then wonder what sort of meals we must be eating every day!. I honestly find it difficult to believe that people think we must be eating cake and desserts all the time!!
I have to confess that our flour and butter consumption has gone up a bit since I started blogging food but if you were to go through my recipes, you will find that it is invariably the western style pastries and desserts (mostly the Daring Baker ones) are the ones that involve the calories and the fats. And we don’t eat them every day, or every week.
I don’t blog all the food that I cook, and do post a lot of recipes which I find interesting and are new to me. We usually eat traditional Palakkad Iyer style, which in my opinion is one of the healthiest vegetarian cuisines I know of. I’m not trying to excuse my choice of what food I blog about or making excuses for what I do, but if you follow my blog you know this blog is about what I cook and experiment with in my kitchen and you will find the “healthy” recipes if you look for them.
There seems to be a wide-spread belief in food that eating vegetables raw is a great way to eat. Yet, my South Indian community’s style of cuisine, which is purely vegetarian, does not have a tradition of eating raw vegetables. In fact, you will find very few Indian vegetarian recipes that call for the use of raw vegetables.

The more I look into the way foods are cooked in Indian tradition with the suggestion of how to cook them and in which combinations, I realise that there’s a lot of scientific wisdom and common sense hidden behind them. I’m not saying that there aren’t better or other acceptable ways of eating vegetables, fruit and other foods, but I’m sure there must be some reason that I’m not yet aware of, why we don’t eat our vegetables raw.
So coming from such a tradition, it’s understandable that I really don’t like eating salads if I can help it. My daughter will go to great lengths to avoid salads insisting in typical frank teenage speak s that “raw vegetables are food for the cows”!

I wouldn’t go quite so that far as I am slowly acquiring a taste for salads that are accompanied by dressings that are good on flavour, or salads that have fruit, and maybe paneer (an Indian fresh milk cheese) too.
Here’s a salad I came up with during last year’s Persimmon season. Persimmons have started regularly showing up at my local market during season and I have come to like them very much. My family doesn’t share my like for them but they will eat them if they’re presented in some other form than fruit.

Persimmons are commonly found in two varieties, the Fuyu and the Hachiya. The Hachiya is a little elongated and looks somewhat like a tomato, while the Fuyu is squat and a bit like a pumpkin in shape. The Hachiya can be eaten only when ripe to the point of bursting, when it has a juicy and honey-like taste. Otherwise it is astringent and leaves a very unpleasant sensation in the mouth. The Fuyu on the other hand does not have this problem and can be eaten when half-ripe, not too sweet and crunchy.
This makes the Fuyu persimmon a good addition to salads, and is the star of this salad. You can use a mildly sharp Cheddar or Feta cheese if you prefer instead of paneer, but my choice is paneer for its unsalted and fresh flavour.
Persimmon Paneer Salad.

Persimmon & Paneer Salad With An Orange-Honey Dressing
Ingredients
- 3 quartered persimmons firm Fuyu , sliced
- 1 pear firm ripe , cubed
- 1 tomato large , deseeded and diced
- 1 orange , peeled and prepared into segments
- 1/3 to 1/2 cup paneer crumbled
- 1/4 cup spring onion chopped greens
- 12 to 15 spinach leave fresh baby (or green of your choice)
- handful cranberries A small dried
- 1/4 cup cashewnuts toasted broken
For The Orange Honey Dressing
- 3 tbsps honey
- 1/4 cup orange juice (preferably fresh, or unsweetened)
- 2 tbsps olive oil
- to taste Salt
- to taste Red chilli black pepper flakes / crushed
- 1 to 2 tbsps mint coriander or fresh , chopped
Instructions
- Put the chopped persimmon, pear, tomato and orange into a large bowl and mix. In another smaller bowl, lightly whisk together the ingredients for the dressing. Refrigerate both separately till ready to serve.
- Just before serving, add the paneer, spring onions and spinach leaves to the fruit. Add the dressing and toss the salad until it is well coated with the dressing. Garnish with cranberries and toasted cashewnuts. Serve immediately.
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I get that a lot too, people think we live of cakes and pastries and they think that we do blog every meal we eat ..and frankly I feel even if I did – it’s my dietary choice 🙂 I know for sure some of these people just love to punch holes in everything you do !! I think u have a great blog and u have a great variety of cuisine too… And yes that is an awesome salad :)))
Thanks to fantastic menu. I managed to get and it also felt amazing: -)I have a website together with wedding cake dishes me personally should you be fascinated. You can find it at http://recipes-for-food.com/
Thanks for sharing the information about persimmon. It was valuable as I ate this fruit first time in my life.