Asian Inspired sweet potato, pepper, pomegranate and cashew salad with Nam Jim dressing

A lovely little salad to tickle your taste buds. Nam Jim is a classic Thai dressing. Super simple to make and super versatile too, it's a match made in heaven with beef, prawns or keep it veggie like I've done here, great when you've got lots of odds and ends to use up! I've roasted of the vegetables in this recipe but it would be equally as good raw (omitting the sweet potato of course)!

The Recipe

Makes 2 generous portions

1 sweet potato

2 red peppers

3 spring onions

a handful of baby tomatoes

7 radishes

30g of cashews

100g of spinach

1/2 a pomegranate

coriander for garnish

thai basil for garnish

Nam Jim Dressing

2 red chillies

1 small knob of ginger

a small handful of coriander leaves and stems

50g of palm sugar ( or brown sugar if unavailable)

2tbsp of fish sauce

juice of 2 limes

Method

1. Preheat your oven to 190 oc. Cut up your sweet potato and red pepper into 1 inch chunks, dress in a little olive oil, and season with some salt and pepper. Roast until soft and slightly charred

2. On a baking tray, place the cashews with a little salt and roast until golden brown and crunchy.

3. Prep all other ingredients, slice the radishes thinly, quarter the tomatoes, slice the spring onions, deseed the pomegranate. I normally keep this all seperate and mix together when I''m plating up. 

4. Next make the dressing, I normally chop the coriander, chilli, garlic and ginger roughly first of all, then place in a pestle and mortar with all the other ingredients, and bash together. It should be well blended and or poring consisitency. Check for seasoning, it should be sweet, salty and spicy, adjust as you wish. 

5. To plate up layer your spinach on the bottom of your serving dish. Place some of the roast sweet potato and pepper, scatter a little of all the other ingredients, and some of your nam jim dressing. Repeat in layers so you have lots of different flavours in each mouthful. Scatter over some more pomegranate seeds, roast cashews and drizzle over more of the nam jim dressing. Pick some thai basil and coriander leaves for garnish. Bon App!