Nigella Lawson’s Delicious Salmon and Avocado Salad

In Celebration of Nigella’s Sydney Visit, 2016

We are big fans of Nigella Lawson. We love her always-delicious-recipes and casual way of cooking, enjoy her particular style and admire her resilience.

And I’ve gotta say that the Monday Morning Cooking Club gals are pretty bloody excited to see Nigella Lawson at a Business Chicks breakfast this Friday morning.

We have a connection with Nigella – she saw our first book in a shop window in Bondi when she was in Sydney in 2011 and ordered her copy online. I was the very excited person who completed her order!

She then wrote a great Kitchen Witter post about our book, and was later kind enough to endorse the soft cover version of Monday Morning Cooking Club – the food, the stories, the sisterhood in 2013: “Just seeing it in the shop window made me feel comforted; having the book at home is pure cosy joy”

So, in celebration of Nigella’s 2016 visit to Sydney, we decided to cook one of her recipes from her most recent book ‘Simply Nigella’. This lovely book was one of our top 10 cookbooks for 2015.

We’re all feeling healthy (post festive season and all) and chose her Salmon, Avocado, Watercress and Pumpkin Seed Salad. What I love about this recipe is that Nigella shares an excellent way to poach salmon fillets and the salad is simply great (and SO healthy) on its own but also makes a good base if you want to add to it (some of us just can’t live without carbs and onions in a salad). I love it as it is and my family would enjoy the addition of brown rice, pickled onions and roasted pumpkin wedges.

We followed her recipe exactly, except that I couldn’t find any watercress where I am at the moment so I substituted baby rocket and spinach leaves. I also used activated organic 2die4 live foods pepitas (pumpkin seeds) which are particularly crunchy and well flavoured (and very dark in colour). Yum. And thanks Nigella for your wonderful recipes!