Papaya Salad with Mustard Dressing

Crunchy greens, creamy avocado and fresh papaya. These enticing flavours and contrasting ingredients result in a festival of flavour.

On a beautiful, sunny warm day when we’d rather be outside than in the kitchen, summer salads are the perfect solution – simple to toss together, but totally delicious. This simple ripe papaya salad, served with avocado, spinach and rocket leaves ticks all the boxes in terms of taste, texture and crunchiness. The salad is simple and quick to make, and can fulfil the role of a side or even a main dish. It is vibrant with its colours, using in-season fruits and vegetables and can complement a picnic spread beautifully. In addition to this it can be perfect as a light lunch or an appetiser for any meal.

This salad, while being delicious, is also incredibly healthy, as both papaya and spinach provide great health benefits as they are filled with vitamins and fibre. There is a perfect balance of flavours as the lime juice, mustard and ginger give the dressing a subtle, yet noticeable acidic taste. This is soaked up by the spinach and greens, and when eaten with the sweet papaya the combination of these flavours dance in the mouth and makes it absolutely divine.

.

Helpful Tips and tricks for making Papaya Salad with Mustard Dressing

• The greens in the salad can be replaced with any others, such as watercress, arugula, but I would personally avoid lettuce as it clashes with the other ingredients.
• Make sure the papaya and avocado are ripe, but not over ripe or mushy.

.

.

Papaya Salad with Mustard Dressing

Serves: 4 Prep Time: 15 Minutes

Nutrition facts: 200 calories 20 grams fat

Rating: 5.0/5

( 4 voted )

Pin

Print

Ingredients

• 1 small ripe papaya
• 1 ripe avocado
• 50 grams baby spinach
• 50 grams pea shoots
• 50 grams rocket leaves
• 2 tbsp roasted pumpkin seeds
• 2 tbsp parsley, roughly chopped

For Dressing:

• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp lime juice
• 1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
• 1" ginger grated
• 1 tbsp chopped mint
• Salt and pepper to taste

method

1. Peel the papaya, then half it lengthways and remove the seeds before cutting it into cubes. Halve the avocado and peel  off the skin, then slice it lengthways into thin slices.
2. Put the papaya, avocado, spinach, pea shoots, parsley and rocket leaves into a large bowl. 
3. Whisk all the ingredients of the dressing together until it is well blended. 
4. Pour the dressing over the salad and gently mix all the ingredients. Be careful when mixing as the papaya and avocado  are both soft.

Did You Make This Recipe?

If you did, take a picture and tag me on Instagram at @poetryofspices!