Super D-Raw Cauliflower Salad

D is for DETOX . . .  but mostly plain old D-ELICIOUS.

Holy mother of munch-worthy-ness, I am insanely obsessed with this salad right now. I want to eat it every day of the week. I want to feed it to everyone I know. I want this to be the official salad that shows up at every pot luck and BBQ that you (or I) attend any time of the year from this day forward.

FOREVER.

Oh, and it will I tell you – because it is so stinkin’ easy, and EVERYBODY will love it. No lie.

AND it’s wildly good for you! I can’t even stand it….too many wins.

Is that even possible?

Start with a head of crunchy cauliflower. “Rice” it down in a food processor along with an apple (for subtle sweetness). Now toss this through with some thinly sliced onion, salty smoked almonds, creamy cubes of avocado and an un-GAWdly amount of chopped fresh herbage. Ladle on the love with a lemony-mustard slightly honeyed dressing and you too will be contentedly chomping away in no time at all.

Happily and healthfully ever after.

You will be completely hooked and I am not even exaggerating for one iota of a second. Are you ready to be delightfully detoxified (I mean, RAW cauliflower, people!)? Then get out your food processor (and if there was ever a reason to own one if you don’t already I’m telling you this is it) and we can get after it. The sooner the better.

I don’t know about yours, but my inner eco-system can always use a good spring cleaning!

I like to get the dressing all mixed before I do anything else, and this particular conglomeration of components will come together for you in minutes…gotta love that.  Just shake up some grainy-style mustard, honey, the juice of a lemon, olive oil, salt, pepper and a little water in a jar. You can be adorably Pinterest worthy and use a mason jar for this (although it’s more my style to wash out an old pickle jar. I save waaaay too many jars. It’s a problem I’m working on, okay?), or just whisk this together in a measuring cup.  I already spent too much time talking about this.  WHATEVER! You got this. Make the dressing. Let’s move on….

Core and roughly dice an apple. Core and cut apart a decent sized head of cauliflower. Chop this into manageable pieces and adding about a third of it to your food processor at a time, give this a pulse pulse pulse, and get it all nice and choppy until it resembles rice.Dump your “rice” into a big bowl, and continue this process until all the cauliflower is chopped. I add the apple at the very end to keep it from totally disintegrating into oblivion. But make sure to mix it through!

Now get out your best knife skills and veeeeery thinly slice 1 shallot. Get yourself a great big fist full (or more, more is good here) of fresh herbs…..I used parsley and dill, but you may have something else you like better…..and give that a chop. Bust out a can of Smokehouse Almonds……I mean, you can use whatever you want but the smoky goodness of these guys…oh yeah baby, on second thought….definitely use these. Give ’em a chop! Peel, pit and cube 2 ripe avocados…..and plunk everything down on top of the chopped cauli-apple mixture.Now stand back and admire your handy work! Ain’t that purdy?

Yeah, well, not for long……….

cos you are going to drizzle that dressing up all over everybody……..

and giver her a toss. I place it in the sink for this move to prevent fall out. Like, as in, fall out on the floor. No bueño to that.  But THIS, however……..

Now THIS is some serious bueño coming at you!!! You get juicy crunch from the apples and cauliflower, crackly smoked saltiness from the almonds, velvety smoothness thanks to the avocado, a bit of sweetness from the honey and tons of tongue twanging flavors from the lemon, onion and mustard, all balanced out with a generous hit of fresh herbs.

In less time than it takes to clean out that food processor, I promise! Make this and call it DINNER, I’m tellin’ ya.  It is fast and it is filling, and it is so, so good.

RECIPE BELOW: This recipe is my adaptation of Pinch of Yum’s Spring Detox Cauliflower Salad. I would have NEVER thought of this on my own…..like, whaaaat? Raw cauliflower? No way. Ever. SO thank you, Lindsay and company for this one. What a keeper. Makes enough for 2 really big dinner sized portions (keep in mind I am a bit of a pig), or up to 6 as a side. Takes less than 20 minutes to bring together, and for sure the worst part of that is squeezing the lemon. I mean it!…. those seeds….arghhhhgggg! So yeah, this is cake. Except it’s a salad.