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Indian Cucumber and Coconut Salad

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I like my dals with something refreshing on the side. Lately, I’m all about this salad, adapted from Das Sreedharan’s “The New Taste of India”, a fantastic cookbook filled with delicious vegetarian recipes from Southern India.

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The salad takes a bit of chopping, but it’s totally worth it, both for its flavor, and for the rave reviews it gets everytime I serve it.

Indian Cucumber and Coconut Salad

For the salad:
1 cucumber, peeled and finely chopped
2 Tbsp desiccated coconut (or more to taste)
1 carrot, finely chopped
1 tomato, finely chopped
1 fresh green chilli, finely chopped
a small bunch of fresh cilantro (i.e. coriander), finely chopped
salt

For the dressing:
2 tsp olive oil
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 dried red chilli, halved
1/2 tsp asafoetida
~10 dried curry leaves
juice from half a lemon

  1. Place all the salad ingredients in a bowl and set aside in the fridge.
  2. Put the oil in a large frying pan with the mustard seeds, cumin seeds, red chilli, asafoetida and curry leaves. Turn the heat up to medium and wait for the seeds to start sizzling and smelling delicious.
  3. When the mustard seeds begin to pop, pour the oil and seeds over the salad. Add the lemon juice and some salt to taste and mix thoroughly. If you can wait, cool in the fridge before serving.

Related posts:

  1. Indian food for your health
  2. Eggplant Bharta
  3. What’s on your spice rack?
  4. Red Lentil Dal with Panch Phoran
  5. Spicy red lentil soup with cumin and tomato

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This entry was posted on Sunday, April 20th, 2008 at 5:54 pm by monica and is filed under Recipe, food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

9 Responses to “Indian Cucumber and Coconut Salad”

  1. Indian Cucumber and Coconut Salad at spacekadet blog Says:
    April 20th, 2008 at 5:55 pm

    […] Crossposted to SmarterFitter.com […]

  2. MizFit Says:
    April 21st, 2008 at 11:01 pm

    YUM!!

    email me if youd ever wanna be a GUEST CHEF on MizFit!

  3. monica Says:
    April 22nd, 2008 at 5:57 am

    FO SHO!

  4. Cassie Says:
    April 24th, 2008 at 5:17 pm

    Monica, what a gorgeous salad and great combination of ingredients. I’ll be making this one soon. Looks delicious!

  5. monica Says:
    April 24th, 2008 at 9:07 pm

    Thanks! I highly recommend eating it with some dal. They are soooo good together. Let me know how it goes!

  6. Cassie Says:
    May 16th, 2008 at 4:07 am

    Hi Monica! My husband made this salad for us - and ohhh, is it ever GOOD! I couldn’t imagine the combination of flavors together when I first read the recipe but it sure sounded wonderfully interesting. Will definitely be making this again. Thanks so much for sharing it. And we went with your suggestion to have it on the side with dal - it was such a delicious meal. :D

  7. monica Says:
    May 16th, 2008 at 8:31 am

    Cassie, I’m SOOOO glad you liked it. I don’t suppose you took a picture? Yours are always so much better than mine. ;-)

  8. Cassie Says:
    May 16th, 2008 at 8:09 pm

    Hi again, Monica! Thanks for the nice comment on my pictures. Yours is very nice!! My husband actually took a picture of the salad after he made it. I posted it here. It’s really a super recipe. Glad we finally tried it! :)

    (Hope the link worked! :))

  9. SmarterFitter Blog » Blog Archive » Eggplant Bharta Says:
    October 11th, 2008 at 6:30 pm

    […] am slowly adding to my lexicon of tasty Indian recipes. First there was Dal, then there was Cucumber and Coconut Salad, now there is Eggplant […]

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