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Cucumber Baby Spinach Salad with Coconut and Peanuts: This unusual, healthy salad is surpirizingly delicious--refreshing, crunchy and rich with nutrients!

Cucumber Baby Spinach Salad with Coconut and Peanuts

Closely adapted from Anna Jones. I used more cucumber, and spiralized it on the widest ribbon setting, but you can also seed the cucumber and slice it into half moons. Like any salad, I consider the ingredients to be to taste, although Jones considers the cilantro to be essential and I agree. I think other nuts would work well too, like cashews or macadamia nuts.
Course Salad
Cuisine salads
Prep Time 25 minutes
Total Time 25 minutes
Author TheSpicedLife

Ingredients

For the salad:

  • 3 hothouse cucumbers, spiralized on the widest setting
  • 2 handfuls roasted and salted peanuts, finely chopped
  • 1 bunch bunch cilantro, the bottom 1-2 inches chopped off, and the rest roughly chopped, including tender stems
  • 3 large handfuls washed baby spinach (I just bought one package and used that)
  • 1 cup unsweetened coconut flakes, toasted

For the dressing:

  • juice of 1-2 lemons, to taste
  • 1 T honey
  • 1 t soy sauce, I used a Chinese superior dark
  • 2 T thick coconut milk (just scoop out the separated coconut cream from the water in an UNshaken can)
  • 1 t avocado oil (you can sub with olive oil)
  • 1-2 t grated fresh ginger, to taste

Instructions

  1. First spread the coconut flakes out on a cookie sheet and begin toasting them in a 300 F oven (they will take 10-20 minutes--they are done when fragrant and darkening).
  2. After prepping your ingredients (spiralizing the cukes, chopping the peanuts, etc), toss the first 4 ingredients together in a large bowl.
  3. While the coconut flakes continue to toast, make the dressing: whisk together all of the dressing ingredients, starting with the juice of only 1 lemon and only 1 teaspoon of ginger. If you wish the dressing had more oomph, add more ginger and lemon juice.
  4. Toss the dressing into the salad and then sprinkle the toasted coconut flakes on top of the salad.