Clémentine (blog: Amande & Basilic) shares with us recipes to cook the best healthy meal. Here is the main dish! Easy to prepare, and so yummy. Perfect for your coming spring picnics!
An original pasta salad
Pasta salad is a basic recipe [in France] that everyone prepares when the weather allows us to eat outside. Even if I am pretty sure you already did eat one in the past, I think you never tasted one that looked like my wild aromatic herbs pasta salad.
In order to realize this salad, you can pick up wild herbs by yourself. You may be thinking that to do so, you have to live in the country side where there are wild herbs all around. Well, not necessarily. Even if it is better to avoid streets and their pollution, you can still find some herbs within the cities. [Or you can just buy them!]
My pasta salad, nutritional wealth
The wild aromatic herbs are rich in nutrients, taste and are sometimes use for medicinal purpose.
This pasta salad is full of these herbs which are real treasures for your health. If you have a look at all the ingredients of this recipe one by one, you will learn a lot about their benefits.
Wild herbs have more nutrients than cultivated ones, and each of them have their own benefits. If I chose this or that herb at the moment I am writing this recipe, it is because they are the seasonal herbs available outside. But if I had to cook it at another time of the year, I would choose others. In the same way, the place you live in also determine the herbs you can find. So it is not that simple to create a recipe that will please everyone, but you can all find wild herbs to add to this salad.
The pasta salad’s mesclun
Arroche - this herb can be cooked like spinach. It helps the digestion process, so it is recommended for people who want to loose weight. It also soothes the throat and liver, and is very efficient against insect bites. It is rich in iron, magnesium, phosphorus, calcium and vitamin C.
Arugula - like the arroche, arugula helps the digestion process and is recommended for weight loss. It also stimulates the liver. Arugula is rich in vitamin K, B9 and calcium.
Alliaire (french kind of garlic) - it acts in the body as a diuretic. It has a light garlic taste, and has vermifuge and cicatrizing properties.
Cardamine - it tastes like watercress and is rich in sulphur and vitamin C.
Please be careful when picking up wild herbs and be 100% sure they are edible. Do not take any risk. Nature is generous but can also be dangerous. Picking herbs is also an opportunity to spend some time to carefully look at nature and help to enjoy every bite of the herbs.
If you like pasta and salad, do not hesitate and try this recipe!
Wild Aromatic Herbs Pasta
Preparation: 30 minutes
Cooking: 15 minutes
For 4 guests
Ingredients
400g - pasta (like farfalle)
1 - fennel bulb
250g - wild mesclun (arroche, arugula, allaite, cardamine)
5 - sprigs of flat-leaf parsley
3 - sprigs of basil
3 - chive stems
Some coriander leaves
Ingredients for the sauce
3 - tablespoons of lemon juice
5 - tablespoons of olive oil
1 - teaspoon of apple juice
1 - teaspoon of sumac spice
Salt and pepper
Instructions
Boil salted water to cook the pastas. Once the water starts boiling, add the pastas and let it cook (follow time instructions on the packaging).
Meanwhile, put all the mesclun herbs into a bowl, add cold water and 3 tablespoons of vinegar (whichever vinegar type is fine). It will purify the herbs.
Once the farfalle pastas are cooked, drain them with cold water.
Add the pastas into a bowl with a drizzle of olive oil so they won’t stick.
Thin out the leaves of the parsley, coriander and basil. Wash them.
Rince the mesclun herb with clear water. Spin.
Prepare the sauce with all the ingredients: just add them in a bowl and mix. Add a bit of salt and pepper, but be careful the sumac spice is already salted.
Chop all the leaves (mesclun, parsley, basil, stem, coriander) and mix them well.
Mix the leaves with the pastas, then add the sauce. You can add a bit more of sumac if you want to.
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