Maftoul, Carrot, Feta, Date & Mint Salad Recipe
by Nicola Lando
-
20 minutes prep time
-
25 minutes cook time
-
Easy
Maftoul salad makes a great lunch or light dinner. Maftoul - giant cous cous - is made from wheat dough rolled into small balls, and dried before cooking at home. Our maftoul salad is a feast for the eyes and palate: bright orange carrots roast with cumin, the pink of sumac pickled onions, sharp white feta, sweet dates, and the bright green of fresh mint. The pomegranate molasses dressing has a light sharpness that complements the rich simmered maftoul grains.
Cooked carrots should no longer be just a side dish for a Sunday dinner. Quick roasting brings out a sweetness and tenderness that is welcome as the centrepiece of a salad.
The photographs don't show the tahini sauce - that was a last minute addition. But almost everything tastes better with tahini sauce. Think of it as Israeli mayonnaise. Salads, roast chicken, celery sticks, we'll add it to pretty much anything!
Ingredients Serves: 4
- 700g carrots, peeled and trimmed
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tsp cumin seeds
- 1 tsp salt, divided into two
- 250g maftoul giant couscous
- 600ml chicken or vegetable stock, boiling
- 1 red onion, sliced
- 1 tbsp red wine vinegar or sherry vinegar
- 1 tsp sumac
- ½ tsp sugar
- 8 dates, pitted, sliced lengthways into quarters
- 50g mint leaves, half chopped and half separated into whole leaves
- 50g rocket leaves
- 200g feta cheese, cut into
- 1cm cubes
For the dressing
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tbsp orange juice
- 1 tbsp pomegranate molasses
Method
- Heat your oven to 200C. Cut the carrots in half lengthways, and slice on the diagonal into 1cm moons. Toss carrot slices in 1 tbsp olive oil, ½ tsp salt and cumin and spread on a baking sheet. Roast for 25 minutes.
- Meanwhile simmer the maftoul in the boiling stock for 20 minutes. When cooked, drain and rinse with cold water to cool.
- While the carrots and maftoul are cooking, lightly pickle the red onions. Stir red onion slices together with the vinegar, sumac, sugar and ½ tsp salt and leave to sit for 10 minutes.
- For the salad dressing, whisk together olive oil, orange juice and pomegranate molasses. In a separate bowl, prepare the tahini sauce. Whisk the lemon juice into the tahini. It will seize and thicken. Slowly add iced water a few tablespoons at a time, and continue whisking between each addition. It is ready when you have the consistency of a runny mayonnaise.
- To assemble the salad, toss together roasted carrots, maftoul, sliced dates, chopped mint, rocket, feta, pickled red onion, and dressing. Serve warm or cold with tahini sauce on the side.
About the author
Nicola Lando is the co-founder and CEO of Sous Chef, where she has spent more than a decade sourcing, tasting and selecting specialist ingredients, cookware and tableware from producers around the world.
She trained at Leiths and later completed a stage at a Michelin-starred London restaurant, experiences that helped shape Sous Chef’s original mission: to give home cooks access to the same exceptional ingredients used by professional chefs.
Today, Nicola leads much of Sous Chef’s product sourcing and ingredient selection, working directly with producers and travelling internationally to food fairs, farms, mills and manufacturers. She tastes thousands of products each year and has built deep expertise across storecupboard ingredients, olive oil, condiments, spices, preserved foods and specialist cooking ingredients.
She holds an olive oil sommelier certification from ESAO in Spain, Imperial Executive Education’s Certificate in Nutrition for Health: Evidence-Based Tools and Strategies certificate; as well as studying Food Safety and Control at University of Greenwich.
Nicola also writes recipes and ingredient guides for Sous Chef, combining practical cooking experience with first-hand knowledge from producers, suppliers and specialist food makers. Her work focuses on helping cooks understand how to choose better ingredients, use them well, and get more flavour from their cooking.
