Cous Cous Salad

Here is another delicious recipe from the last Macrobiotic cooking class and one of my favorite warm weather salads. It takes so little time to make that you will have no choice but to include this as a staple in your weekly menu planning. I love the complexity of sweet and sour flavors with the pungent bite of scallion and the cool crisp crunch of fresh cucumber.

Feel free to use your favorite vegetables in this salad, but replacing the tiny currents with raisins may be to much. On the other hand, dried cranberries would make a tart replacement and may as well throw in a few toasted pine nuts while you're at it.

Cous Cous Salad                                                                              
Serves 6

2 cups organic couscous
2 cups water
1/3 cup currents
1 cup carrot, grated
1/2 cup cucumber, peeled, seeded and diced
3 green onions, diced

Lemon Dressing
Juice of 1 lemon (about 2 tablespoons)
Juice of 1 lime (about 2 tablespoons)
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon Ume Plum vinegar or 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 teaspoon sweetener of choice (I use a pinch of stevia powder)
2 tablespoons brown rice vinegar

1. Bring 2 cups water to a boil, add the couscous and stir. Cover and turn the flame off.
2. Allow the couscous to steam for 5 minutes. Remove and fluff with a fork to cool.
3. Add the currents while still warm and the other vegetables once cous cous has cooled.                         
4. Whisk together the dressing ingredients and toss with the cous cous. Let sit for 10 minutes to better absorb the flavors.

The Perfect Winter Salad

Winter is the time to store energy and strengthen reserves. The floating energy of Water symbolizes winter. The kidneys control the mineral/salt-water balance in the body. Salt is the essential taste for winter cooking. The minerals not excreted are concentrated in the blood. This mineralized blood is condensed into bone marrow, which serves as a reservoir when more blood is needed. In this way the kidneys nourish the bones. Foods to nourish kidneys include: buckwheat, adzuki beans, sea salt, miso, tamari soy sauce, and sea vegetables.

Excerpted from Cooking For Regeneration, by Cecile Tovah Levin

For a recent Macrobiotic cooking class I made a pressed salad. For this method you are actually cooking the vegetables with salt, pressure and time, and to do so you can use a Japanese pickle press (visit the StillPoint Schoolhouse store) or layer all the ingredients in a bowl and apply a weight, such as a large can or jar of beans, as pressure. Either way the results yield a crisp, crunchy, delicious salad.

The dressing you use can be salty and pungent as with the Wasabi Dressing or sweet and sour as the more traditional Honey Mustard Dressing demonstrates. However, one of the best things about a pressed salad is that it needs no dressing to taste great. Make enough salad for a few meals plus both dressings so you can change the taste for lunch the next day. Serve with a hearty bowl of winter stew and a warm cup of Kukicha tea.

Winter Pressed Salad

2 broccoli stalks, peeled, sliced into thin rounds

2 celery stalks, sliced thin

¼ red onion, sliced thin half moons

¼ Granny Smith apple, sliced thin

1 small head Romaine lettuce, washed and sliced thin

2-3 leaves of radicchio, washed and sliced thin

½ avocado, sliced thin

Toasted black sesame seeds

Sesame dressing or Honey mustard dressing.

Wasabi Dressing: 2 Tablespoons wasabi or to taste * 2 Tablespoons Mirin * 2 Tablespoons tamari soy sauce * 2 Tablespoons Brown Rice Vinegar * 2 Tablespoons Extra Virgin Olive Oil or Sesame Oil * a pinch of Sea Salt * toasted sesame seeds to decorate

Honey Mustard Dressing: 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil * 2 teaspoons Dijon mustard * 1 teaspoon agave or rice syrup * 2 tablespoons golden balsamic vinegar * few drops of Ume Plum vinegar

1. Place all vegetables, except avocado, in a stainless steel or glass-mixing bowl. Add the salt and mix well.

2. Place a plate over the vegetables and press down or use a Japanese pickle press. Weight the plate with a 2-pound can, jug of water or other heavy object.

3. Press vegetables for 1 hour. Remove plate, and squeeze out excess liquid. If the salad is too salty, rinse with cool water and dry thoroughly. Toss with dressing and serve.

Serves 6