By Cat Wilson
Guest Columnist

Broccoli salad with a twist

Do you really need another broccoli salad recipe?

You might think not, but with broccoli being a cruciferous vegetable rich in antioxidants and other beneficial plant compounds that may also offer several benefits, especially for eye health, heart health and disease prevention, and in our quest to eat one pound of raw veggie per day, this is a winner.

There are a lot of variations to broccoli salad, but this is the first I have seen that used the food processor to reduce the broccoli to rice size.

Seriously, when I saw it called for two medium heads (about 10 cups), I almost stopped because, what is a medium head, and how do you measure broccoli by the cup? I wanted to make a half batch of this salad to try it out, so I ended up with 4 cups of broccoli after pulsing, and I’m guessing it would have been about 3 cups for the half size recipe if I had pulsed it to rice size. I omitted the mint because we aren’t crazy about it in food.

We ate it right away for dinner and it was tasty — but the next day after all the ingredients got to know each other, it was even better. It’s one of those recipes you can adjust for what you have on hand: seeds or nuts instead of almonds, cherries or raisins instead of cranberries. I really enjoyed the smaller size of the broccoli and will make it again.

Ingredients for full batch:

2 medium heads raw or parboiled broccoli (about 10 cups, 6-7 cups after pulsing)

30 ounces chickpeas (2 15-ounce cans), drained and rinsed

2 large bell peppers, small diced

4 green onions, thinly sliced

2/3 cup sliced almonds or slivered, toasted (optional)

1/4 cup dried cranberries

10 large mint leaves, chopped (optional)

1/2 cup minced parsley

1. Rice the florets: Place the broccoli florets in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse until the broccoli resembles grains of rice (about 3 to 4 times). Transfer them to a large bowl.

2. Transfer the chickpeas, peppers, green onion, almonds, dried cranberries, mint and parsley to the bowl with the broccoli.

3. Add dressing of choice. I made an oil-free Tahini dressing, but I would also say that a Vidalia onion or honey mustard would be tasty.

Recipe by cookingforpeanuts.com.

Cat Wilson lives in South Bend and transitioned from a vegetarian diet to eating a plant-based diet over two years ago. She may be contacted at [email protected].