After the wonderful cheese experience last week, Today’s recipe is going to be refreshing and a perfect fit for the summer. Wild chard with pineapple tomato and edible flowers. But what is a pineapple tomato? The pineapple tomato is somewhat similar to the beefsteak tomato. It has a beautiful red or yellow exterior.
It’s said that the yellow pineapple tomato is also called Hawaiian Pineapple Tomato. The name has something to do not only with its bright yellow color, but also with its overwhelming size. It’s average weight is between 1 and 1 1/2 pounds. On the organic market, which I mentioned in a previous recipe, there is always an exciting selection of different tomatoes. As long as our own tomatoes are not ready to be harvested, each week we try another tomato variety. If you don’t have a pineapple tomato, a nice red beefsteak tomato is also perfectly fine.
Wild Chard with Pineapple Tomato and Edible Flowers
For those who like the photo, but prefer keeping it simple when preparing meals: the flowers on the salad are not an absolute must for the taste. We are currently growing edible flowers in our herb garden and I just sprinkled a few over the salad to add a splash of color. So don’t worry, the salad tastes good even without flowers. The same applies to the dressing.
There are two ingredients here that you can exchange if you don’t have them. The baked garlic and the baharat. Baharat has a spicy, strong aroma and gives every rice or vegetable dish or sauces and dressings a very special touch. Even though I never work with a lot of spices, adding Baharat to my spice rack was just the thing.
It’s the Spices that Matter
Have a look here at The Spruce Eats’ interesting post, and find out what Baharat exactly is and what it it made of. We always have the delicious spice blend by Ingo Holland, which I recently discovered on Amazon.
I also looked if it’s available outside Germany, but unfortunately, it isn’t. But I decided to make it easy for you, even if you are not based in Germany. Below you find a link to a Baharat spice blend that is available in the US, which is suitable for celiacs and vegans. You can use Baharat also e.g. to spice up simple basmati rice. You just add 2-3 pinches of Baharat over the cooked rice and mix it well. Then add another 1-2 tablespoons of freshly chopped dill, a small dash of olive oil and a little lemon zest. So the boring white rice immediately turns into an aromatic, delicious side dish.
Above you also find a link to some edible flower seeds. Maybe the pictures make you want to try some home gardening :). But don’t worry, the flowers are easy to care for. If you have grown one “batch”, there is going to be enough flowers for one entire month.
If you don’t have Baharat, you can also add a fine pinch of curry and some paprika to the dressing. So the salad comes relatively close to the original recipe. But be careful, just use a tiny little bit!
And here is the recipe:
Print
Wild Chard with Pineapple Tomato and Edible Flowers
- Prep Time: 30 min.
- Cook Time: 5 min.
- Total Time: 35 min.
- Yield: 2
Description
A delicious, summery, refreshing salad with a lot of wild greens, and colorful ingredients.
Ingredients
Salad
2 large handfuls of wild herbs (we had baby chard and dandelions)
1 bed of cress
1 pineapple tomato
1 small cucumber
1 handful of walnuts
some maple syrup
Salt, pepper to taste
1 pinch of hot pepper flakes
Dressing
1 large baked clove of garlic
6 tablespoons of olive oil
1/2 orange, juice
1/4 lemon, juice
1 dash of maple syrup
1 pinch of salt
1/2 tsp Baharat
some chilli
Instructions
- Rub the clove of garlic with olive oil and bake on a baking tray at 250 degrees for 20-30 minutes until soft.* Be sure to read the note below!
- Meanwhile, wash the wild herbs under cold water and spin dry. Wash the tomato and cut it into thin slices. Do the same with the cucumber. Now spread the salad on the bottom of a large plate, then layer the cucumber and tomato on top, sprinkle with the flowers, if available. Add cress.
- Now roughly crush the walnuts and caramelize in a pan with a little maple syrup (really only 1 tbsp, that’s sweet enough) when the pan is hot at medium temperature for 2-3 minutes. Let it cool briefly and spread over the salad.
- When the garlic is soft, press it out of the skin and whisk together with orange juice, lemon juice, salt, pepper, baharat and maple syrup (you can also leave it out if it is sweet enough with orange juice). Then pour in the olive oil and blend at the same time with the hand blender, then it will be nice and creamy.
- Spread the dressing over the salad. Enjoy!
Notes
For everyone who says I’m not going to heat up the oven for 1 clove of garlic – I fully relate to that. When I cooked the recipe, the clove of garlic was left over from the previous day. If you prepare the salad for lunch, you can prepare the oven vegetables with lemon polenta for the evening or for the next day, then it is worth using the oven and you have prepared a second meal for later.
If you decided in favor of the energy-saving option, here you find the link to the oven vegetables:
Leave a Reply