Pea, Olive, and Preserved Lemon Salad Recipe

A basic Moroccan meal consists of an array of salads, often served in the beginning of the meal with bread on the aspect. These salads can both be cooked or eaten uncooked and are historically heavy in olive oil. Cooked salads are served at room temperature and may be made with seasonal or frozen greens. 

This pea, olive, and preserved lemon salad is impressed by my yearning for previous Moroccan salad. The mix of the sharp and intense floor ginger, floor turmeric, preserved lemon, and olives is quite common in Moroccan delicacies, and extra notably within the m’qualli tagine, which makes use of comparable substances. Right here, I mix these flavors with candy spring peas, although most frequently I take advantage of frozen peas, as they’re picked and frozen at their peak, and thus persistently sweeter and extra tender than most recent peas, save for a slender window within the spring. Plus, frozen peas are prepared instantly, making this salad extremely fast to drag collectively. 

To make this salad, I begin by gently blooming the spices in olive oil, permitting the warmth to coax out and evenly toast the spice flavors; as a result of lots of the taste molecules in spices are fat-soluble, this step infuses the oil with taste and ensures the spices come by way of in each chunk. After that, I add the peas, preserved lemon, garlic, and cilantro, and heat all of them collectively, simply lengthy sufficient for the peas to defrost. After stirring within the olives off-heat, the salad is prepared as a pleasant aspect.