liver supporting
Warm Salad of Pumpkin And Artichokes
Healthy, delicious and easy to make
Pumpkin And Artichoke Salad
I want a colourful warm salad for my Christmas table, and one that will also support my body’s gut health and liver cleansing work!
I think this salad fits the bill.
Globe artichokes contain great prebiotic fibre which your gut bacteria will love, plus high levels of phenolics, a type of compound which has an antioxidant benefit to the body.
Parsley is a green leafy vegetable, loaded with flavonoids that help to support the body and liver’s work of detoxification and has beneficial anti-inflammatory effects.
Pumpkin looks and tastes great in this salad, plus it has the added benefit of containing beta carotene, which converts to the important health boosting vitamin A in the body. I like to use different varieties of pumpkins – Butternut, Golden Acorn and Festival.
Pumpkin And Artichoke Salad
Serves 4 generously as a side dish, or 2 – 3 as a main meal
Set your oven to 180ºC
What’s In it:
700g pumpkin, any types
2 tsp cumin seeds
2 tbs extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper
1 large leek, white part roughly chopped and washed
Approx. 200g cooked artichoke hearts, from jar or can
30g pumpkin seeds
40g raw almonds or walnuts, roughly chopped
1 big handful flat leafed parsley leaves
Juice from 1 lemon
Oven set to 180
How To Make:
Cut open the pumpkin and remove the seeds and webbing around the seeds. Then cut the pumpkin into slices, about 2.5cm thick, leaving the skin on. If your pumpkin is a large one, then cut the slices into approx. 10cm long.
In a large bowl toss the pumpkin slices with 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil, cumin seeds and a large pinch of salt and pepper.
Tip the pumpkin onto a large baking tray and pop into the oven for 40 minutes, or until the pumpkin is just soft and the edges are going crispy.
Toss the chopped white part of the leek with 1 tbs extra virgin olive oil. Once the pumpkin has been cooking for 20 minutes, pull out of the oven and scatter the leek over the pumpkin to cook and crisp up for another 20 minutes.
About 5 minutes before the end of cooking time, toast the almonds and pumpkin seeds by scattering them over the top of the pumpkin/leeks.
Roughly chop up any large artichoke hearts into quarters.
Pull the pumpkin/leek/seeds/nuts’ tray out of the oven.
Into a large salad bowl toss the pumpkin mixture with the artichokes, parsley and lemon juice. Add more salt and pepper to taste.
Serve either warm or cooled.
