Radish, Dried Fig & Apple Salad

Every year one of my favorite cooking websites Food52.com has a cookbook competition of the year's best cookbooks called The Piglet. They do it bracket style like college basketball's March Madness. This year, I decided to get each cookbook, try out some of the recipes and share them with you.

First up is the book Sirocco by Sabrina Ghayour. It is a beautiful book with incredible pictures of nearly every recipe. The recipes are full of spice and flavors of the Middle East - Persian, Lebanese, and Mediterranean to name a few. While some of the dishes really pushed me out of my comfort zone in terms of flavor profiles and ingredients, there are many enticing and delicious recipes that I have already tried and loved.

The Radish, Dried Fig & Apple Salad in Ghayour's book is not only beautiful to look at, it is bursting with flavor. The sweetness of the dried figs and the crisp, tartness of the apples pair perfectly. This salad is great for a weeknight dinner because it so easy and simple to prepare, but it is stunning enough to serve at a fancy dinner party. Since our family ate it on a weeknight I halved the recipe to make 4 servings, the recipe normally serves 6-8 generously.

Radish, Dried Fig & Apple Salad
Ingredients:
8 ounces dried California or Turkish figs, stems removed, quartered
2 Braeburn apples, quartered, cored and thinly sliced
5 ounces radishes, thinly sliced
2 cups pomegranate seeds
2 Tbs. olive oil
4 Tbs. pomegranate molasses 
3 1/2 ounces mixed greens

Combine the fig, apple and radish slices and the pomegranate seeds in a large bowl. Dress them with the olive oil and pomegranate molasses and toss to coat everything.Add the greens to the dressed ingredients and mix again - there should be sufficient dressing to coat the leaves without making the salad too mushy. Serve piled high on a flat platter.