Raw Massaged Kale, Red Cabbage & Mung Bean Sprout Salad

Ever tried massaging a salad before? Neither had I, until this weekend. It’s very simple and kinda fun to get your hands dirty to swoosh around delicious ingredients in your favourite salad bowl.

We made a massaged kale (grønkål in Danish) salad which seems to be the green leaf of choice for this method as the leaves are tough, which you need, otherwise it would fall apart into a big mess. If you haven’t tried kale before, it’s a wonderfully nutritious, very frizzy and quite ‘tough’ (to chew) green leaf from the cabbage family with a somewhat bitter taste. Kale is said to be one of the healthiest vegetables you can eat.

How to massage kale:

1. Rinse the kale leaves
2. Cut the leafy bits off the stalks (we actually kept the stalks and enjoyed their crunchy-ness). Place in a large salad bowl
3. Chop a ripe avocado into the bowl and gently massage it into the kale leaves. If necessary, add a drizzle of olive oil to make it easier
4. Add a healthy serving of shredded red cabbage (easiest is to use a food processor for this – grating would take a while)
5. Add herbs and spices of your choice. We chose a curry version so added cardamom, coriander, cumin, turmeric
6. Add a pinch of sea or himalaya salt. A sprinkling of ground pepper
7. Add a little more substance with mung bean or lentil sprouts (these are so easy to grow at home) for a hearty salad
8. Dress with a dressing of your choice. We made: mustard, olive oil, apple cider vinegar, miso paste
9. And finally top with chopped cashew nuts and whole hemp seeds (a superfood packed with protein, fibre & ideal omega-3:omega-6 ratio)

I love using our bamboo bowl for salads as it just makes them feel more rustic and healthy somehow.

We adopt a ‘Cook once, eat twice’ menu planning tip whenever we can as it really does save time and effort having to think about what to prepare for each meal. That’s what we did with the massaged kale salad, the next day simply adding raw courgette ‘spaghetti’ to it from a recipe we learnt at a raw cooking class in Thailand:

1. Use a spiraliser or a special vegetable peeler (large with a ‘wave’ pattern) to shred the courgette into spaghetti like strips. Add to the above salad
2. Mix chopped garlic (3 pieces:1 courgette), a healthy sprinkling of chilli or paprika, 1-2Tbsp lemon juice, chopped cashew nuts in a little bowl. Massage this into the above salad mix (add a little olive oil or coconut oil if necessary)

This photo was taken at our raw thai cooking class and includes dill and coconut milk instead of oil