This pumpkin salad is super quick but super healthy and delicious! It’s customisable depending on your preference of zataar or dukkah and is great for impressing a late night date. 😘

Ingredients – serves 2

• 4 slices of pumpkin, one inch thick
• 2 small or 1 large beetroot, cubed
• 1 tomato, diced
• 1 small Lebanese cucumber, diced
• 1/2 an avocado, diced
• Spinach and/or rocket
• 4 tablespoons of pumpkin seeds
• Zataar or Dukkah of your choice

Dressings

• 1 tablespoon of tahini
• Juice of 1/2 a lemon
• Pinch of salt and pepper
• Pomegranate molasses

Method

Pumpkin:

Heat your oven or air fryer to 200 degrees C.

Rub a little olive oil onto the sliced pumpkin and beetroot cubes, and place them in the oven on a tray lined with baking paper.

Check them after 10 minutes- Flip them and poke them with a small knife to test if they’ve softened. They will cook faster in the air fryer.

Once the pumpkin is almost finished (softer, some colour) bring the tray out. Move the beetroot to a bowl if it’s cooked.

Rub a little extra olive oil onto the pumpkin slices and spoon over your Zataar. Gently press it into the pumpkin with the back of the spoon to make it stick.

Put the pumpkin back into the oven for a few minutes until it has finished cooking and the Zataar has toasted a little.

Salad:

Assemble your salad; leaves as the base, then sprinkle your tomato, cucumber and avocado evenly on top to make a bed for your pumpkin.

Put a small frypan on medium heat. Add pumpkin seeds and toast them, tossing regularly. Remove from heat when golden.

Dressing:

In a small bowl, mix the tahini, lemon juice and salt and pepper together with a spoon. The mixture will seize at first, keep mixing.

If it needs to be thinner, depending on the size of your lemon, you can add more lemon juice or a little water and keep mixing until it’s thin enough to drizzle. Taste it for seasoning and add more if required.

Final Assembly:

Place two slices of pumpkin on each salad bed.

Drizzle tahini dressing evenly over each salad, then pomegranate molasses over each salad as well.

Sprinkle pumpkin seeds on top of each salad.

🥰🎃✨

Notes:

I prefer to cook this in the air fryer even if all four slices of pumpkin don’t fit at once. I will often cook 2 at a time because it still ends up faster than the oven, and just pop the first batch of pumpkin back in the air fryer for a minute before serving to warm them up again. 🙂

Tweak the tahini dressing as you please. I like mine quite lemony which helps cut the sweetness of the pomegranate molasses.