This recipe comes from the salads section of the Quorn cookbook and is the first one I have attempted. As it contains pasta and quorn sausages I figured it would be substantial enough to have as a main meal. The recipe suggests it served 2-3 but I simply split it into two good portions for our tea and personally I was satisfied with it as a full meal.
In any event this is a salad designed to be served warm rather than cold and I have to say we did enjoy it very much, it is something quite different with Quorn and in the summer this would be a delightful midweek supper.
This is the salad as served, I think it looks pretty nice:
The method is, in theory, very simple. You simply toss together the cooked pasta, cooked and sliced sausages, sliced grilled peppers, pesto and rocket and there you have it. In practice, I had a nightmare with the peppers and although I will definitely make this salad again I will definitely roast the peppers rather than grilling them although this will undoubtedly take more time.
The problem I had with an electric grill was that it was difficult to gauge the point between the peppers appearing not to be cooked at all and then suddenly being completely black. Also they need constant turning and it's all a bit labour intensive. I also found the skins were a nightmare to remove although I know when I have roasted them previously the skins come off in large pieces, not the bitty small sections that happened here.
The sweetness of the roasted peppers is a big part of the flavours and is very tasty - so you do need to do this bit, but for me I will definitely ignore the recipe and roast then blanche in cold water next time.
Overall this is a very tasty salad, you get a lovely balancing from the sweet peppers, tangy pesto, vivid rocket and the herby sausages (I used the lincolnshire ones). I did not use the recommended 4 tblsp of red pesto as I felt this was too much and it added a lot to the points/fat content. I used 2 tblsp instead and it was fine.
In terms of weight watchers points this was more than I was expecting (probably because of the word 'salad' being in the title). Serving 2 each portion contains 10 points which is split as follows: pasta (5), sausages (5). This is based on 6 sausages being sliced up so around 3 each and I got around using oil to brush on the peppers by spraying them with fry light instead (which is zero points) which worked perfectly well.
A pretty healthy and very enjoyable meal here then, the flavours work well and it is very tasty. I think my husband was left a bit hungry but then he exercises a lot so needs more calories than I do, as a light main meal this was perfectly sufficient for me.
We give this salad an 8/10.
No comments:
Post a Comment