This warm salad is a must-try for all the green veggie enthusiasts out there! It’s a warm green bean, broccoli, and pesto salad that you can enjoy as a standalone dish or use as a pasta dressing.
To prepare the pesto, you’ll need a food processor. Add pine nuts, fresh basil leaves, garlic cloves, kale leaves, olive oil, lemon juice, and salt to the food processor bowl. Blend until all the ingredients are finely chopped and a smooth and creamy consistency is achieved.
To prepare the veggies, chop the broccoli and green beans into bite-sized pieces. This salad is a perfect way to consume green vegetables, especially during colder months when raw veggies may not seem as appetizing. Moreover, if you find it hard to digest raw greens, this salad could be an excellent addition to your diet.
Did you know that broccoli contains sulforaphane, a phytochemical that may protect the skin against free radicals, boost our detoxification enzymes, reverse photoaging, and even help prevent and treat cancer?
However, sulforaphane gets destroyed by cooking, and to prevent that, broccoli must be cut or chopped to release the enzyme myrosinase, which activates sulforaphane. Therefore, after chopping broccoli or cruciferous veggies, wait at least 40 minutes before cooking.
The next step is to cook the broccoli and green beans. Boil them for a short period, about 5 minutes, until they are bright green and tender.
PRO TIP: Add some cherry tomatoes to the mix to give the salad a pop of colour and extra flavour!
In a separate frying pan, fry the cherry tomatoes for a couple of minutes. Then, add the cooked veggies and pesto to the pan and mix well.
Your warm green bean, broccoli, and pesto salad is now ready to be served, and it’s a delicious and healthy addition to any meal.
Warm green bean and broccoli pesto salad
Ingredients
- 1 broccoli chopped into florets
- 300 g green beans chopped
- 200 g cherry tomatoes halved
Pesto
- 4 tbsp pine nuts
- 1 cup basil
- 1 cup kale
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1/2 lemon (juice)
- salt to taste
Instructions
- To make pesto, add all the ingredients to a food processor and blend them well.
- Meanwhile, in a pot of boiling water, add broccoli and green beans and cook for approximately 5 minutes until they become bright green and tender. Once done, remove the veggies from the pot and put them aside.
- Next, lightly fry the cherry tomatoes and then add the cooked veggies and pesto to the same frying pan. Mix all the ingredients properly.
- This salad is an excellent side dish. You can also use it as a pasta sauce. Either way, it is amazing!
