Our friend Caroline had been to Drake Eatery in Bondi and said you MUST go there and have the grain and seed side dish. She said you probably wouldn’t order it if you didn’t know about it, so please order it and tell me what you think… So of course we did, and we loved it, and now order it every time we go there because it’s such a great place, and the salad is a total winner.
So I’ve been wondering for ages how to replicate it.
We were invited to a friend’s birthday at his home two days ago on the 1st January (HB PH!) and I suggested I would bring a salad. What a perfect salad to bring, I thought, if I could find out what they put in it? So I consulted the oracle and found, several pages in, a salad recipe that sounded EXACTLY like the one I was looking for! So there it was, on the Food To Love website, brought to you by the Australian Women’s Weekly! So no disrespect to Drake, but I reckon this is where they got their idea…
Mediterranean Grain Salad aka Drake’s spiced grains, almonds, labne and currants
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup brown rice
- 1/2 cup french-style small green lentils
- 1/2 cup quinoa
- 1 cup (250ml) water
- 1 small red onion
- 1/2 cup currants
- 1 cup flat-leaf parsley leaves
- 1 cup coriander leaves
- 1/4 cup lemon juice (1 lemon)
- 1/3 cup olive oil
- 2 tablespoons pepitas (pumpkin seeds)
- 2 tablespoons sunflower seeds
- 2 tablespoons pine nuts
- 1 teaspoon cumin seeds
- 1/2 cup flaked almonds
- 1 cup (280g) labne
- 1 1/2 tablespoon honey
Steps
- Wash the rice and lentils, separately, drain and then cook in large saucepans of boiling salted water for 20 minutes or until tender, then drain and rinse well in cold water.
- Wash the quinoa and drain, and then tip in to a small saucepan with the cup of water and a sprinkle of salt and bring to the boil. Reduce heat to a simmer, and cover for 10 minutes until tender. Drain.
- Roast pepitas, sunflower seeds and pinenuts together on an oven tray (keep the cumin seeds and flaked almonds all separate on separate pieces of foil), in a 180°C oven for 8 minutes, stirring half way through.
- Peel the onion and finely chop. Squeeze lemon juice. Wash the herbs, dry them and chop the leaves.
- Combine the cooked rice, lentils and quinoa in a large bowl. Add the chopped onion, pepitas, sunflower seeds, pine nuts, currants, herbs, juice and the olive oil and stir well.
- Stir the cumin seeds into labne in a small bowl.
- To serve, top salad with spoonfuls of labne, drizzle with honey and scatter with the flaked almonds. (At school we would omit the almonds).
Tips
Labne is drained yoghurt. You can make it at home, straining Greek yoghurt through cheesecloth in the fridge for 3 days, or you can buy it at Kemeny’s or Harris Farm like I do!
The Bondi Cook 