grape, corn, spinach and candied walnut salad

Lets talk about salads. Salads are unreal. I try working on the Ayuverda 5 tastes principle of sweet, salty, sour, bitter and hot/pungent (spicy) for all meals, but this particularly works well with salads.

sweet
Sultanas
Grapes
Candied walnuts/almonds
Apple
Pear
Orange segments
roasted pumpkin
roasted beets
melon slices
fresh corn off the cob

salty
I usually add some salt to the salad dressing or sprinkle on top of the salad
Capers
Olives

sour
I usually sprinkle some lemon juice into my salad dressing or just straight onto the leaves
Cranberries
capers

bitter
A lot of salad greens can be bitter:

witlof
radicchio
rocket
endive
baby spinach
kale

hot/spicy/pungent
A grind of pepper
Some finely diced salad onion
some radish
some mustard in your salad dressing
fennel
rocket
some thinly sliced chilli

and then I try to have some grains in it like wild rice or quinoa or lentils or butter beans.

how to candy nuts: I make a sugar syrup with 1/4 sugar and 1/4 cup of water. Cook in high heat until the syrup starts to turn a light honey colour. Throw in your chopped nuts and toss until all the syrup is absorbed/reduces to a crusty mess in your pan. Wait until the nuts cool down to just warm and move to a chopping board. The sugar syrup should not sticky and you should be able to chop up the nuts easily. If its still sticky wait. The pan looks like a mess but some hot water will wash of the sugar easily.

Try having one of each tastes in your next salad. You can always make up some tastes in your salad dressing.