Vegan Salad Recipe with Cauliflower Rice, Inspired by Traditional Curd Rice
This salad recipe is inspired by the traditional South Indian dish – Curd Rice. In stead of dairy curd, I am using peanut curd and replacing rice with cauliflower rice to turn it into a salad.
You can use any other plant-based curd recipe for this salad but I am adding the recipe of peanut curd later in this blog.
Cauliflower Rice Salad in Vegan Curd
Ingredients
For the Dressing
- 1 cup peanut curd or any other plant based curd
- 1.5 tsp grated ginger
- 1/2 tsp hing (asafoetida)
- lemon juice to taste
- salt to taste
For Tempering
- 1 tsp mustard seeds
- 10-12 curry leaves (kadi patta)
- 1-2 dry red chilli if not available, use chilli flakes
For Salad
- 1 large cauliflower head minced or grated
- 1 large red bell pepper finely chopped
- 1/2 medium zucchini grated
Instructions
- Mix all the dressing ingredients and let it sit for 30 minutes
- While the curd is resting, chop and grate the vegetables as required.
- Prepare the tempering. In a heavy bottom pan, dry roast the mustard seeds. As soon as they start spluttering, add the curry leaves and red chilli. If using chilli flakes, add them after turning the stove off.
- In a large bowl, mix the vegetables, dressing and the tempering.
- Salad is ready. EnjoyI
Peanut Millet Rice Curd
Equipment
- Blender
- Nut milk bag/cheese cloth/muslin cloth
- Heavy bottom pan or double boiler
- Curd pot/Non metallic pot like glass, clay, stone, ceramic
Ingredients
- 1 cup Peanuts
- 1/4 cup Rice (white, brown, millets) I used barnyard millet
- Water for soaking
- 3 cup Water for peanut milk
- 3/4 cup Water for rice milk
- 1 tbsp Soaking water of rice to use as curd starter
Instructions
- Soak the peanuts and rice for 6 hours. I soak at 3 pm, make curd around 9 pm and it's ready for next day.
- Soak the rice in exactly 1 cup water, this is important as we will use 1 tbsp of this water as the curd starter
- After 6 hours, from the soaking water of rice, save 1 tbsp of water as we will use this as the curd starter. This water has live culture.
- Discard rest of the soaking water of rice and peanuts.
- Add peanuts in the blender with 1 cup fresh water to make a smooth paste and then add 2 more cups of fresh water to make it thinner.
- Pass this through a nut milk bag to extract peanut milk.
- Now take the rice/millet in spice jar of the blender with very little water to make a smooth cream, then add a bit more water to make milk. In total, you need to use 3/4 cup water with this rice.
- Heat the peanut milk at medium flame while stirring till it starts to bubble.
- Now reduce to low flame and slowly add the rice milk while stirring continuously.
- The milk will become very thick, switch off the flame.
- Keep stirring till it cools down to lukewarm temperature otherwise it will start setting already
- Once it comes down to lukewarm warm temperature that is comfortable to touch, transfer this to your curd pot or any non metallic container and add the curd starter - 1 tbsp soaking water of millet/rice
- Mix it well. I like to use my hands to do this to add additional bacteria from my skin.
- Cover this with cloth or clay lid and let it rest for 7-9 hours.
- Curd will be ready in the morning.
