Refreshing courgette and avocado salad *with wine pairing
A refreshing summer salad, this raw courgette & avocado salad. Very quick and easy to make, and very easy to adjust to your own liking (See *Notes). This salad can be great as a Lunch with some home made bread, or as a side dish.
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
🥘 Main ingredients
- avocado
- courgettes
- lime
- coriander
- mint
- garlic
- olive oil
- tomato
- red onion
- salt and pepper
- pinch of cayenne pepper
💭 Variation ideas
I was pleasantly surprised with this creation on one of those days where you just look in the fridge and start creating with that what you can find. I love the refreshing flavour of raw courgette on a warm summer day. When I use courgette raw I often tend to go towards refreshing / tangy type of dishes. While when I use courgette in a cooked way, it releases different flavours, and my dishes would go more towards, nutty or smokey flavours. A great versatile vegetable. But of course you can make a beautiful raw courgette salad while using nutty flavours which pair so well with the avocado, like this adjusted recipe below;
A raw courgette and avocado salad with a nutty twist.
With this salad I added some extra peas, and still used lime juice because it goes soooo well with courgette and avocado. But I dressed the salad well with a good amount of walnut oil. YUMMY! This changes the whole dish in a more warming and nutty salad. Topped with the roasted tomatoes works wonders! 😉
There are various options with the use of raw courgette and avocado. Play around, and find your favourite!
I actually used this courgette and avocado salad in many different forms during my jobs as retreat chef. It is a salad that goes with almost everything. You can pair it with spicy dishes, and a nice ‘cooler’. Or add it to your favourite pasta. And as I described in the *Notes you can substitute the avocado with cucumber to make it lighter, and even more refreshing.
Even though not ‘traditional’, but raw courgette is delicious in a tabbouleh salad, or add it to any of your own invented salads.
🍷 Wine pairing
If you serve this dish as a lunch dish with some nice home made crunchy bread, you might want to have a nice glass of wine with it. This summery courgette and avocado salad is a very versatile wine pairing dish, a Roussanna / marsanne blend from the south of France. Or a crispy Chablis would work as well, or even a sauvignon blanc from the Loire. But a dry, fruity Rose would make a wonderful pairing as well 😉 Enough to choose from. Enjoy!
*If you do tend to use this recipe as a side dish, you might want to pair the wine more according the main dish.
Be creative and start creating with your own set of added ingredients. Don’t forget to add @haricoco1 to your Instagram posts, I always love to see your ideas and your style of decorating. Bon appetit!
📋 Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 avocado
- 2 courgettes
- 1/2 lime juiced
- 1 handful of coriander chopped
- 1 handful of mint chopped
- 1 garlic clove chopped & crushed
- 2 Tablespoons olive oil
- 1 large tomato coarsly chopped
- 1/2 red onion finely chopped
- salt and pepper
- pinch of cayenne pepper
Instructions
- Peel and grate the two courgettes. You can do this by hand or with a food processor.
- Cut the avocado in half & discard the pip. Slice one half of the meat in nice even slices, and the other half in small cubes.
- Mix in a bowl the grated courgettes with the avocado cubes, olive oil, lime juice, the crushed garlic, the chopped coriander and mint and add salt and pepper to liking, leave to marinade.
- Meanwhile coarsely chop your tomatoes, and finely chop the red onion.
- Mix the tomato and red onion, with 1 tablespoon olive oil, salt and pepper and a pinch of cayenne pepper.
- In the bowl of courgettes massage the avocado cubes (which have softened by now) carefully into the grated courgettes, drain most of the liquid off (keep liquid), and keep aside.
- Dress the avocado and courgette mixture on your plate, put the slices of avocado on the side, and sprinkle with a little bit of the drained liquid. Or you might want to layer it in three layers, in which the first layer is the nicely sliced avocado, topped with courgette and tomato (see pictures in post)
- Top everything with your tomato salsa, and season extra if needed.
Notes
Nutrition
This Courgette salad recipe is part of my series; ‘Travels of taste‘. We use our taste buds to travel the world and discover the use of our senses and imaginations to meet other cultures through food. So today we find ourselves around the Mediterranean. If you are ready to imagine yourself travelling around the Mediterranean while sensing its salty air & hot summers and tasting its incredible variety of fresh food. Check out my full Mediterranean ‘travels of taste’ post; >>> The Med; Olive oil, herbs & fresh produce.
