One of my all-time favourite salads. A classic yet sophisticated Spanish recipe that borrows the best from the ‘escabeche’ technique to create a super healthy, luxurious and flavoursome salad.
I’m telling you… This is not a common salad. This one is special. Last year, we had it for our Christmas lunch and it instantly became a new family favourite. Everybody loved it! True that it will require you a bit of effort to nail it down. But I guarantee you that the result will pay off the extra investment you’ll need to put in when preparing it.
The main particularity for this recipe lays on the use of pickled quails or ‘quails in escabeche’. We’ve already written about this traditional Spanish way of cooking food, that uses vinegar to marinate the meat (sometimes fish too) in order to preserve it for longer periods of time.
Attending to the high number of different regional preparations involving quails, we can only guess that Spaniards – specially the Castellanos – love these wild birds. Pickled quail escabeche salads are one of the most popular ones although I had never tried this specific recipe yet. I just love they way the acidity of the pickle gets balanced out by both the sweetness of the vinaigrette and the saltiness of the ham-infused beans. It really is quite something!
But enough talking for today. Give this escabeche salad a go and let us know how you liked it. Hope you enjoy both the cooking and the eating!
INGREDIENTS
- 4 Quails - In Escabeche (Pickled)
- 1 White Onion
- 400 g Baby broad beans
- 160 g Iberico ham - Diced
- 40 g Lamb's lettuce
- 80 g Ruby gem lettuce
- 40 g Pine nuts
- Extra virgin olive oil
- Salt
- Ground black pepper
- For the vinaigrette
- 3 tbsp Extra virgin olive oil
- 1 tbsp Cider vinegar
- 1 tbsp Dijon mustard
- 1 tbsp Honey
METHOD
- Heat some olive oil in a saucepan and cook the onion over a medium heat until soft and translucent.
- Stir in the ham and cook for 2 minutes. Then stir in the baby broad beans and mix well so that the beans get impregnated with the ham flavours. Take off the heat and reserve.
- Make the vinaigrette by whisking together the olive oil, the cider vinegar, the mustard and the honey.
- Toast the pine nuts slightly and reserve them.
- Plate a bed of lettuce first, pour the beans over and top up with the quail. Sprinkle some pine nuts over and drizzle with the dressing.
