Caramelised Carrot & Red Onion Salad, with Bulgur and Cilantro Flowers - An Original Recipe (Vegetarian)

On warm summer days a flavoursome salad for dinner is preferable to a hot and heavy meal.  I love the lightness of all the fresh vegetables and herbs, yet plenty filling with the carrots and the addition of a grain - in this case bulgur wheat.  I know many people avoid grains these days for weight and digestive issues, amongst other things.  But personally I find no ill-effects on my digestive system if the grain is organic and therefore pesticide free.  Surprising how much difference this makes, but then a little bit of poison is still poison so perhaps it's not so surprising after all!

I've been so busy lately that I've had to neglect my outdoor duties a little and my cilantro plant has flowered, which means I will have to let it go to seed now.  Once cilantro has flowered there is no way to bring it back to being all leafy like before.  The thing to do is wait for the round corinader seeds to form and then grind them up to use in cooking, or plant the seeds to grow more cilantro.  I will be doing both!  But since the flowers are so pretty and have the same cilantro flavour as the leaves, I decided they'd be a lovely thing to scatter over my salad.  I love the flavours of carrot and cilantro together... if you've ever had these flavours in homemade soup you'll know it's gorgeous!  So why not a salad.  And I have to say it was absolutely delicious!

Ingredients:

30g bulgur wheat

2 carrots

1 red onion

1/2 red pepper

3 cloves garlic

Baby spinach

Cilantro flowers

Drizzle of honey

Squeeze of fresh lemon

Black pepper

Method:

Put the bulgur into a saucepan and cover with cold water.  Bring to the boil then simmer on moderate heat for about 15 minutes until tender.  Drain and set aside (or allow to cool and pop into the fridge, depending how soon you're going to eat it).

Slice the red onion and carrot into bite-sized chunks (not too thin) and lay in a roasting tray.  Drizzle with honey then roast in a preheated oven at 200 degrees Celsius for 15 minutes.

Finely dice the red pepper and garlic.

In a bowl mix together the bulgur, carrots, red onion, red pepper, garlic and a good squeeze of fresh lemon.

Wash the spinach well and pat dry with a clean tea-towel.  Roughly slice up for ease of eating.

Here are my cilantro flowers... I chopped them up smaller so they can be easily scattered over the salad.

Arrange the salad - spinach to line the bowl, then the grain & veg mixture on top of that. and finally scatter the cilantro flowers over the top and sprinkle with black pepper.  Delicious!

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Many thanks.
 

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All photos in this post are my own original.