Winter salad to strengthen your defenses

Raw foods strengthen your body with their load of nutrients. Boost your immune system with this recipe for cold weather.

Although salad is not the dish we most associate with winter, it is clearly one of the essential dishes of this season.

A good salad gives us foods loaded not only with vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates and even proteins, but also with the most powerful antioxidants to protect us.

Now, if you are one of those people who feels cold just imagining that “you have to eat salad” when temperatures drop, it is best to look on the positive side. And the salad has a lot of positive! It’s a great way to include foods at their best, raw, with their nutrients intact.

On the other hand, a salad doesn’t have to be cold. Just don’t put food fresh from the fridge on your plate: let it cool down or soak it in warm water when washing.

You can also include some cooked food – such as sautéed carrot or pumpkin al vapor – that helps you overcome the psychological barrier of not eating hot in winter.

SALAD WITH CITRUS AND CRUCIFEROUS TOPPING

This salad combines seasonal foods with different properties such as citrus, spinach, pomegranate or endive.

Ingredients for 2 people:

For the base of sheets:

• 1 celery stick, with leaves
• 1 cup canons
• 1 cup spinach sprouts
• 4 leaves of endive
• 2 endives

For topping:

• 4 Brussels sprouts
• 1 cup cauliflower florets
• 1 grapefruit, the juice
• 1 tangerine, juice
• 1 lemon, the juice
• 1 pomegranate, peeled and shelled
• 1 teaspoon black pepper, freshly ground
• 10 black olives

For the avocado and beet sauce:

• 1 avocado
• 1 orange, the juice
• 1/2 beetroot, juice
• 1 tablespoon umeboshi vinegar
• 2 tablespoons first cold-pressed olive oil

Preparation:

1. In a glass container, place the cauliflower cut into small florets and the Brussels sprouts into slices. Water them with grapefruit, tangerine and lemon juices.
2. Add the pomegranate and macerate all 8 hours in the fridge so that the cabbage is impregnated with citrus. When you are going to use this topping, let it lose the cold of the fridge before it, put it half an hour before at room temperature.
3. Cut the celery stem into cubes and set aside the leaves.
4. In a bowl, mix the chopped celery stalk and its leaves with the rest of the salad leaves and olives.
5. In a blender crush the ingredients of the sauce until you get a very soft mousse of intense pink color.
6. Serve the leaves on individual plates or bowls and garnish with the topping and avocado and beet sauce.

NUTRITIOUS, PURIFYING AND VERY ANTIOXIDANT

The base of this salad is endive and spinach. Endive is a winter lettuce that, in addition to providing folic acid, vitamin C and iron, contains bitter compounds that promote liver function.

Spinach adds all its vitamins, especially A, C, K and folic acid, as well as abundant minerals and fiber.

Green leaves are completed with watercress. These are relatives of cabbages, with all their benefits, and also a mine of calcium, iron, folic acid and vitamins A and C.

Cauliflower provides you with its glucosinolates, the compounds in cabbages considered anti-carcinogenic. The advantage is that these are best preserved when consumed raw in salad.

Pomegranate also provides its great antioxidant power, which is added in the topping. This antioxidant power is due to substances such as ellagic acid, its anthocyanins and tannins.

Pomegranate is also considered a very cleansing fruit that helps protect the arteries and reduce inflammation.

Very powerful juices full of antioxidants have been included in the dressing. On the one hand, beet juice, which is rich in betaine. This substance, anti-inflammatory and antioxidant, takes care of the heart and, since the beetroot is not cooked, it is preserved intact.

Finally, by adding to the dressing the juice of various citrus fruits such as grapefruit, tangerine and lemon you ensure a good dose of antioxidants and provide biological water to your cells.