Sprouts Salad

A‘s childhood friend and his wife who happen to be a very close friends of mine as well were visiting us for the weekend. Remember I was in California visiting some friends with my little monster? Yeah! now they were visiting us. They missed junior so much that they had to fly all the way from the west coast to east. How sweet is that?

My husband and his friend have known each other and have been the best buddies since he can’t even remember when. Probably 3rd grade and by luck they’ve been together since. They completed their school together, then they went to the same college, then they moved to the US at around the same time and that too to the same city. Then we got married and guess what?? Our weddings were just two days apart from each-other. I and his better half also moved to the US at the same time and now both of us ladies have become close too. As cheesy as it might sound, I guess nature has helped a lot in keeping the two families so close.

They too are a big lover of food just like we are. So we ate this past weekend and we ate a lot! From traditional Indian to Thai to Italian to spending a whole day barbecuing and how can I forget dessert? Chocolate cakes and strawberry cheesecake parfaits!
We tried a lot of new recipes and my new Kitchen Aid stand mixer helped us all along. But on hindsight we ate so much that by Monday morning everyone gave up and wanted something light and cool. I always have some homemade sprouts in my kitchen I guess for the days like this. So this time I had some moong daal (mung bean sprouts).

We grabbed whatever veggies were left in the refrigerator, made some lemon vinaigrette, tossed them all together and a nice, light and healthy breakfast was ready. Although we still ate it like we ate the rest of the weekend – ‘a lot of it’! But you just can’t resist, can you?
So here’s the recipe to our quick fix Sprout Salad.

Ingredients :

For Salad:
2 cups Mung sprouts
1/4 cup chopped red onion
10-15 cherry tomatoes (cut into two)
1 Jalapeno pepper minced
1 orange (peeled and sliced)

For the lemon vinaigrette:
Juice of 1 lemon
1/4 cup olive
1 clove of garlic
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp coarsely ground black pepper

Method:

The only part that’s a bit tricky here is to make the sprouts. Which if I think again is not that tricky actually.
Take a cup of mung beans or any other bean or lentil you want and soak them in water overnight. Next morning clean them with fresh water.
Take a damp cheese cloth or any piece of cloth which is just thin enough for the air to pass through.
Put the beans into it and tie all the ends together using a string /rubber-band. Just make sure that you leave enough space in the bag for the sprouts to grow.
Place them either in a dark place like a bowl with a tight lid and into the oven or I just hang them near my kitchen sink so that I can sprinkle some water every-time the cloth dries out.
It’ll take a day or sometimes two for the sprouts to grow.

For the lemon vinaigrette:
In a bowl add freshly squeezed lemon juice, minced garlic, salt and pepper. While whisking it all together, slowly add olive oil to it and combine all the ingredients together.
Now for the salad, mix all the ingredients together in a salad bowl and pour the lemon vinaigrette. Toss them all together and serve.