Beetroot Salad with Persimmon, Kale, Goat Cheese and Walnuts: Nutritious, delicious and flavorful 10 minutes salad. Perfect for a healthy fall lunch!
Persimmons are officially in season in Germany! Well, not really since they don't grow here, but now is the season when you can buy them in large quantities. I was trying to incorporate them in savory dishes, while taking a break from pumpkins. Let's face it: there are not so many recipes out there with persimmons. Especially not savory ones.
I usually eat them as a snack or as a part of my breakfast fruit assortment, which is not that creative. I was going for a healthy and wholesome lunch salad. See what I made: Beetroot salad with persimmon, kale and goat cheese. The dressing is made with Tkemali plum sauce. This salad is nutritious and very flavorful as it contains all possible tastes: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, umami, purgent and astringent. It has chewy, creamy and crunchy components.
The balance of tastes makes it really exceptional and worth to try right now, when the ingredients are fresh and seasonal. If you are looking for healthy lunch salad ideas, here you go:
- persimmon is high in fiber and anti-oxidants, vitamins A and C;
- kale is the richest source of vitamin K and contains insane amounts of other vitamins (A, E, C, B1, B2, B3 and B6 ), minerals (manganese, calcium, iron, magnesium and copper), fiber, protein, omega-3 fats and antioxidants;
- beetroot has a high nutritional value and contains a lot of folic acid, fibre, proteins and antioxidants;
- plum-based Georgian tkemali sauce contains organic acids, pectin, vitamins C, E, B1, B2, P, minerals, tannins and carotene. It improves digestion and works as a metabolism booster.
The rest of the ingredients include pomegranate seeds, walnuts and goat cheese. It takes 10 minutes to make, if you have pre-roasted/pre-boiled beetroots (see instructions here) and tkemali sauce, which is an absolute must-try! Otherwise it takes about one hour to make all the preparations. As a bonus, you will have a couple of jars of tkemali sauce, which is so good, I put it on everything, from pizza to bread. Once you have roasted your beetroots and made your tkemali sauce, you are nearly done. The rest just takes a couple of minutes and requires minimum efforts. Check the recipe below:
Beetroot Salad with Persimmon, Kale and Goat Cheese
Ingredients
For the salad:
- 1 bundle curly-leaf kale
- 1 roasted beetroot
- 1 persimmon
- 80 grams or 2.8 oz soft goat cheese
- 40 grams or ⅓ cup walnuts
- 2 tablespoons pomegranate seeds
For the dressing:
- 2 tablespoons tkemali sauce
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- salt
- black pepper
Instructions
- Wash and dry kale leaves with a kitchen towel. Remove the ribs with kitchen scissors as shown here. Roughly chop kale and transfer to a bowl. Sprinkle with 1-2 pinches of salt. Knead kale for a minute until it's soft and dark.
- Prepare the dressing: Combine tkemali with olive oil. Add some salt and pepper.
- Arrange kale on two plates. Slice persimmon and beetroot and distribute them evenly on plates, stacking one after another.
- Using a spoon, arrange goat cheese on top. Add walnuts. Pour the dressing over the salad. Sprinkle with pomegranate seeds.
- Enjoy!
Notes
Nutrition
Do you know any other dishes with persimmons? Please leave a comment below.
Cheers,
Elena
Ksenia @ At the Immigrant's Table says
Great work putting that tkemali sauce to use 🙂
Elena Szeliga says
Thank you! Still have 2 jars, so there will be more recipes coming 😀