Hazelnuts and Pomegranate: Ingredients for Life
I recently found a great winter salad that has a great point value for Weight Watchers. It’s called a “Rainbow Chopped Salad” and it’s filled with plenty of fruits and vegetables. I learned a couple of things while making it. I learned how not to roast hazelnuts and I think I mastered how to seed a pomegranate.
I’ll first talk about what not to do when roasting hazelnuts. Do not place shelled hazelnuts in the oven like I did. You are supposed to unshelled them first or buy them already unshelled. After roasting them for about 10-15 minutes, the skin would crack. Wiping them with a kitchen towel would easily remove the skin. I ended up roasting them a little longer than needed and had a heck of a time getting the shells off. I ended up having lots of broken hazelnuts, but that didn’t ruin my salad. Next time I will buy the unshelled hazelnuts. I still like the idea of roasting them myself.
Pomegranates are a beautiful fruit. I remember eating them as a kid. My mom would give me a quarter of the fruit which I would just bite into. I would suck out the juices of the seeds and then spit them out.
These days you can buy pomegranate seeds, but now that I have seeded one, I will never buy pomegranate seeds and I hope you won’t either.
First, you take a knife and cut around the fruit partway. Once you have a cut, you can use your hands to pry it open. Now rip the halves into further sections.
Fill a deep bowl with water. Take a section of the pomegranate at a time and underwater, carefully using both hands, remove the seeds from the membrane. Doing it underwater avoids stains.
The seeds will sink and the majority of the membrane will float. I was pleasantly surprised by the abundance of seeds that actually came out of the fruit. It took less than ten minutes.
You can find the recipe for rainbow chopped salad from epicurious.com. I skipped the Asian pear and blue cheese and used extra virgin olive oil.
I’ve made this salad two weekends in a row now and have had great reviews. It’s definitely a healthy choice especially when surrounded by holiday feasts.
