Weekend Cooking: Sprouted Fenugreek Salad

According to me, Summer is the ideal time for having some light, cool and refreshing salads along with our meals.... So this week I am going to share the recipe for my healthy and fresh Sprouted Fenugreek Salad....

Of late I have been trying to include some healthy ingredients in my daily cooking and what better way than to use sprouted beans!! Over the last month I have regularly used sprouted chickpeas, yellow peas and black peas to make salads and side dishes. I was casually mentioning this to my mom last week during our weekly chatting and that's when she suggested that I should try sprouting Fenugreek seeds and making a salad out of it. She mentioned that Fenugreek seeds have a lot of medicinal and nutritional value and are especially good for diabetics as it helps with the glucose control.

Though Fenugreek is a common ingredient in Indian cooking, I had never heard of it being used in the sprouted form ..... So, I immediately did a google search on Fenugreek seeds and I have to say, I did find plenty of articles stating its nutritional value and uses... If you are interested, here's the Wiki entry on Fenugreek. Anyways, I decided to try this salad since there can surely be no harm in eating sprouts and plus am a diabetic, so this salad is a must-try for me!! :)

Preparation Time: 10 minutes

Serves: 2

Ingredients:

Fenugreek Seeds (aka vendhayam aka uluva), sprouted - a fistful

Small White/Yellow Onion, diced - 1

Tomato, diced - 1

Green Chillies, finely chopped - 2 ( modify according to spice level)

Mint Leaves, chopped - for garnish

Coriander Leaves/Cilantro, chopped - for garnish

Lemon Juice - 2 tsp

Salt & Pepper - to taste

The Sprouting Process:

1. Wash the Fenugreek seeds in water to remove any dirt and then soak them in a vessel with water overnight. 
2. Next day, drain the water from the seeds, rinse them and transfer the moist seeds onto an air-tight container. Place it in a cool spot in your kitchen for a day. 
3. Most likely when you check it the next day, it might have sprouted... if not then repeat step 2.
4. Once the seeds have sprouted, you can store them in an air-tight container in the refrigerator for upto a week. 
5. Use the sprouted seeds as and when needed, in your dishes.
6. This is a generic process for sprouting any kind of pulses or lentils. Depending on the toughness of the skin on the lentils, the sprouting process may take anywhere between 2-4 days.

Method:

1. Now in a salad bowl, add the sprouted Fenugreek seeds, finely chopped onions, tomatoes and green chillies and mix them with a spoon.
2. Then add salt and pepper and sprinkle the chopped cilantro and mint leaves to the salad. 
3. Pour the lemon juice on top (Fenugreek seeds naturally have a bitter taste and the lemon juice helps reduce the bitterness and also gives the entire salad a zest!) and give the salad a quick toss....and..... our healthy and "yummy-licious" salad is ready!!!! :)

This recipe is part of the Weekend Cooking meme hosted by Beth Fish which is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs.