Eat with your eyes and make a colour salad

Colour salads is a phrase that tends to tumble from the lips of many a visitor to Babylonstoren‘s Babel restaurant. It’s one of their simplest and loveliest odes to the gardens they grow. By focusing on colour first, they’ve taught us how to listen to the seasons and take a page from nature’s cookbook. Here’s why we love colour salads, our tips for making your own and some of Babylonstoren’s very own salad dressings.

On our last visit to Babylonstoren, we were lucky enough to enjoy a meal at their Babel restaurant but instead of scouring every ingredient to finally decide on a dish, we chose the meals that whispered to our emotions. Red for vibrancy or green for calm. Isn’t that an interesting way to give your body what it’s silently asking for? Create one at home and experience this for yourself.

Some things to keep in mind when making your own colour salads

• See what’s currently in season and then pick a colour to build your salad around, it’s incredible how Mother Nature’s seasonal fruits and veggies allude to ever present taste harmonies.
• Once you’ve settled on a colour (make it a quick choice, what colour speaks to you?) select only a few veg from that spectrum.
• Don’t forget about fruits, they play off each other rather nicely.
• Think about herbs to add, edible flowers, nuts and legumes that can adorn your dish, you may even want to serve it on a banana palm leaf?

Lastly, whip up a salad dressing to go with your chosen colour salad. Here the awesome team at Babylonstoren share three colour salad dressings from the pages of their inspirational cookbook, Babel.

Red salad inspiration

This dressing tastes great with any predominantly red salads filled with the likes of tomato, radish, fig, beetroot, berries, red cabbage, red onion, egg plant and other lovely, blushing fruits and veg. Red salads are chock-a-block with good guys like lycopene and anthocyanins which are said to boost your resistance to free radicals and cancerous cells. Also, they’re great for the heart.

Oil-free fig dressing for red salads

Ingredients:

6 medium-rip purple figs with thin skin
125ml white balsamic vinegar
10ml honey
1 garlic clove (optional)

Blend all the ingredients together with a stick blender or in a jug blender until smooth. Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper to suit your taste.

Green salad inspiration

Green fruits and veg are low in sugars and high in fibres and water, as well as being loaded with those phytonutrients we were talking about. They’re great for regulating blood sugar levels and are therefore a natural gem for keeping your cells and arteries in good knick.

Drizzle this dressing over any green salads, filled with the likes of broccoli, watercress, lettuce, zucchini, waterblommetjies, cucumber, fennel, celery, avocado, pea shoots, asparagus, beans or any other seasonal greens.

Fresh tarragon and sour cream dressing for green salads

Ingredients:

125ml crème fraîche
5ml French mustard
10ml verjuce
1 crushed garlic clove
5ml chopped fresh tarragon or lemon verbena
10ml honey (optional)

Whisk together all the ingredients. Add a little milk if you want a thinner consistency. Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste.

Yellow salad inspiration

Not only a mood booster, yellow foods claim the cards when it comes to cartenoids and bioflavanoids. So, good for seeing in the dark (who doesn’t want to be a superhero) as well as boosting your immune system and digestion.

This dressing tastes delicious with any salads made up of carrots, pumpkins, squashes, yellow peppers, apricots, nectarines, mangos, loquats, guavas, nasturtiums and squash blossoms, gooseberries and many more.

Roasted pineapple, orange and coriander dressing for yellow salads

Ingredients:

4 slices of pineapple, peeled
Olive oil
10ml white balsamic vinegar
125ml sunflower oil
1 small shallot
5ml chopped chilli
Fresh coriander leaves

Slow roast the pineapple slices in the oven at about 180°C. Blend the cooled pineapple and all the ingredients for the dressing together. Season with salt and a hint of white pepper to taste (bear in mind that white pepper is a lot stronger than black pepper).

You eat with your eyes. Yes indeed you do. With veggie patches going wild and fruits dropping from heavy bows, the famous colour salads of Babylonstoren’s Babel restaurant sure make a whole lot of sense. We hope you’re inspired to create your own works of edible art and instead of painting by numbers, we say cook by colour.

With thanks to Babylonstoren for sharing these tasty recipes, from the pages of their book, Babel.