A Warm Pumpkin Salad with Salmon and Pumpkin Seeds

This is a great tasting warm salad for getting more nutritious pumpkin and pumpkin seeds into your diet. It’s full of superfoods, very healthy and quite filling as well.

If pumpkin is not in season, butternut squash should be and makes a good alternative with a delicious taste and a similar nutritional profile.

You can make this warm salad recipe with either pumpkin or butternut squash with the same directions ahead.

Recipe Ingredients for 2

• A small pumpkin or half a medium sized one with the seeds removed (any remainder can be kept in the fridge and used for a healthy soup within a couple of days).

• A fillet of wild salmon or fresh mushrooms for a vegetarian option. Wild salmon is far superior to the farmed version if you can get it. You can add a couple of mushrooms with the salmon in this warm salad for extra flavor and health benefits if you like both.

• Mixed organic salad leaves, washed. I like rocket, spinach and watercress for this warm pumpkin salad recipe.

• Around a quarter of a cup of raw pumpkin seeds. Crushed or chopped brazil nuts are good replacement if you don’t have them and pine nuts or cashews would also work, but pumpkin seeds are healthier and taste great.
  

• A cup of cherry tomatoes, cut into halves.

• A tablespoon of organic extra virgin coconut oil.
• Crushed garlic, cracked pepper and Himalayan crystal salt to taste.

How to Make Warm Pumpkin Salad with Pumpkin Seeds

1. First cut up into strips and steam your pumpkin, as detailed in the page on cooking pumpkins for maximum nutrition.
2. While it’s cooking, dice up your mushrooms so they’ll cook relatively quickly. Salmon fillets are probably best flaked after the lightest of fryings.
3. When the steamed pumpkin is ready, take it off the steamer and put it on your chopping board to cool for a few minutes (it tends to hold its heat for quite a while).
4. Heat the coconut oil on medium heat in a frying pan and gently cook your mushrooms in the coconut oil.
5. Salmon needs little cooking and I preferred to fry a thin fillet lightly in coconut oil with the lid on for just a short period on both sides. Once done, the salmon can then be flaked off over the salad in bite-sized portions.
6. While the mushroom and salmon are cooking, transfer the rinsed salad leaves and cherry tomatoes into a serving bowl.
7. Now slightly cooled, it should be a little easier to remove the skin from the pumpkin strips on your chopping board. Scoop them out and gently chop the steamed strips into your desired size (around an inch in length works for me).
8. When the salmon looks just about done, add the pumpkin seeds, crushed garlic, crystal salt and cracked pepper and stir in briefly on a low heat. To keep as many nutrients as possible in the garlic and pumpkin seeds you really only wanted warm them up rather than fry them until brown.
   
9. Once the salmon and pumpkin seeds blend is ready spoon them out and onto the salad leaves. Gently toss and cover the serving bowl with a plate to retain the heat.
10. For a final step that really brings out the flavor in the steamed pumpkin, add a little more coconut oil if needed and transfer the chopped pumpkin strips to the same frying pan used for the salmon and mushrooms.
11. Lightly fry on a low heat for just around a minute, gently turning occasionally to infuse more of the garlic, coconut flavor into it. Once they are done, spoon the pumpkin into the serving bowl with the salmon and pumpkin seeds and carefully toss the salad again to mix all of the ingredients well.

Serve your hot pumpkin salad immediately. It’s rich and filling and extremely healthy so I hope you enjoy it.

Please share this recipe for warm pumpkin salad with your friends. There’s many more superfood recipes like this here.