How to make a dump salad

This is an alternate version with yoghurt and strawberries

My colleague once made a dump salad – she dumped all thefruits she had and covered it in some kind of ready made sweet dressing. It wasdelicious, but that’s not what this recipe is about. It’s about another saladthat I invented and named it dump salad, because it involves dumping togethereverything in the fridge.

My dump salad has 5 groups of ingredients:

1. The essentials

2. Vegetables

3. Fruit

4. Moisture

5. Spice

6. Nut

1. The essentials.

The essentials are the things that youabsolutely cannot do without. Salt,khorsani, lemon, and oil fall here. Use them as per taste.

2. Vegetables

As I said, just dump everything in yourfridge. Just follow a few guidelines:

a. Choose veggies that are relatively bland. Forexample, veggies like karela and bhede khorsani have a distinctive taste andflavor of their own and do not taste good when eaten raw or semi raw. Cauliflowers, boiled corn, mushroom, cabbage, are some of my favoriteingredients. But you can go ahead and add green beans, peas, boiled chana,asparagus, iskus or anything else you want. I do not like the taste of rawcarrot, and if you do, go ahead. If not, grated carrot should be good.

b. Dice up all these veggies into minute pieces.

c. Take the veggies that you do not normally eatraw, like mushrooms, which might smell if raw, and cauliflowers, which are toocrunchy when raw, and either micro, steam or boil them for 2 minutes. Do notcook for more than 2 minutes, else they will lose their texture and turn intoslime. This is a dump salad but not baby food.

Mushroom amd cauliflower about to be microed. I only added corn because they are frozen, I do believe fresh boiled corn is better.

d. Dump everything else that is eaten raw – banda,peas, green beans, etc. Saag is wonderful too. I personally dislike rayo. I luvsup ko saag but many people find it too strong. Anything in between, chamsurpalungo, romaine spinach, go for it, but sprinkle it on top, else it may becomewatery.

3. Fruit

Frankly, vegetable salads always soundedbland to me, until I discovered that I could add fruit to it. I got the ideafrom the book lemony snicket, where Beatrice Baudelaire makes a salad of peasmangoes and avocados. Anyways, fruit is an essential part of this salad.Choose a fruit that has a tang (imagine a very sweet fruit like banana in aveggie salad. No, it would absolutely not work.) My favorite fruit to putin a dump salad is amilo aaru, or tangy peach. Strawberry, kiwi, pear, alubakhada, and pineapple workgreat too. Raw mango would be the best, but if the mango is too hard to bite,then you can either cook it with the veggies or grate it. I would assume thatother berries like cranberry, and ainselu would do great too. Just chop up n mixwith salad.

5. Moisture

Moisture is a vague name. I guess it can loosely be called chhop. This ingredientgives some kind of lassa to the dish, There are three options for this. Avocado,yoghurt, or boiled egg yolk. Dahi is my favorite, and though avocado works,sometimes it gives a strong fishy smell in company of other veggies. But if you can stand it, go for it. Boiled eggs work great, the whites add to the salad and the yolk can be blended thoroughly to provide a creamy texture. And if you like none of these, then don't use any. Salad tastes fine without this ingredient.

4. Spice

You can use either onions, or garlic, orgreen onion. Using more than one would be overkill I think, because salads requiremilder flavor than cooked veggies. My personal fav is onions, from all theversions that I have tried.

This version has green onions as spice, avocadoes as moisture and nectarines as fruit.

6. Nut

The nut adds flavor and texture to the salad. Use chopped walnuts, cashews, or almonds. Do not use whole nuts, they might prove too hard to chew. And don't use too many nuts, as the the vegetables should be the main ingredients and nuts should be just the garnish. Again, do not use more than one type of nut at a time, because it takes away from the vegetables. A sprinkling of raisins or dried cranberries and the like wouldn't harm. Nuts, like moisture, are optional, but are highly recommended.

Finally, throw everything together, sprinkle salt and lemon juice to taste, and garnish with oil of your choice. I use olive oil, which works fine and is healthy too, but I get misty eyed thinking of tori ko tel. The oil can be used raw or heated. The benefit of using heated oil is that you can jhano the dish with methi and khrsani, but I often use unheated oil and raw khorsani which works great too. Go wild withjimmu heeng or any other exotic spices that you would like to use (I use heeng to great effect).

Enjoy yummy and pretty dump salad :)

Alternate version with pineapples, cucumbers and boiled beans, ground carrot