Romaine w/ Lemon-Date Dressing & Pizza

This salad is from The Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen cookbook by Donna Klein. It is very simple, but surprisingly delicious. I have a lot of cookbooks, which I'm ashamed to say, I rarely consult. But, every now and again, I like to peruse them for ideas; this recipe reminds me that I should do that more often.

I don't feel like I can give a proper review of this book, because I've only used it once or twice. And, I'm sure a lot of you are like me; you already have too many cookbooks that you don't use very much. But I will say this,  the book provides a broad range of recipes with simple, yet becoming combinations of ingredients and flavors, and she provides the nutrition information for all the recipes. Here's a review I found online that I think sums it up nicely.

Now, back to the salad. The dressing is simple: olive oil and lemon juice, add in a pinch of cinnamon and some crushed coriander seed...it all pairs deliciously with the romaine and the chopped dates. The recipe calls for sugar, but I left it out...who needs sugar when you've got the sweetness of the dates? The cinnamon and coriander really make this salad a treat. (I snuck in a bit of flax oil  for nutrition's sake...if you're not a fan, leave it out and enjoy the simple flavors unadulterated.)  I can't publish the exact recipe...but combining the simple ingredients to your taste would probably do the trick.

Tip: the dates tend to get a sticky when chopped, so mix up the olive oil and lemon juice in bowl, then toss the chopped dates in and give it a good stir...the oil in the dressing separates the date peices nicely.

Then,  I was channeling Alicia of Vegan Epicurean  when I made this healthy spinaccoli pizza:

It's a whole wheat pizza with lightly cooked broccoli, garlic slivers, and chili pepper, topped with fresh spinach, walnuts and pinenuts. I put the spinach and nuts on at the very end of baking and let them heat up a little so they weren't cooked, but just warmed.

For the sauce, I made a batch of VE's Sundried Tomato Marinara, and it is delicious...it went perfectly with the broccoli and spinach. The marinara is meant to be a raw recipe, but it I baked it with the pizza crust, so became unraw...but really yummy just the same. We ate the pizza slices topped with nutritional yeast.

 

Happy Saturday All!