Watercress Salad with Quail Eggs and Seeds

The beauty of this salad is with the key ingredients: watercress, quail eggs, ricotta and seeds. When watercress is available, I like making this salad adding exciting treats like quail eggs. Quail eggs are the smallest eggs you can find, but their visual impact is huge and commanding.

The biggest story with this salad has to do with the seeds. They provide the real boost in look, texture and flavor. I followed Ottolenghi’s recommendation of making a load of the seed mix. Store them in jars (labeled them awesome foursomes seeds) ready to be sprinkled on any salad, grain or rice dishes that need some crunch. I don’t see why you can’t put the seeds in yogurt and have them for breakfast! Just a thought.

The foursome is the combination of almond, pumpkin, sesame and nigella seeds. That’s a very useful trick I got from this recipe of using the seed mix to give quick finishing flourishes to any otherwise ordinary dishes.

When I couldn’t find nigella seeds, I use black sesame seeds as substitute.

Make extra seed mix to sprinkle on any dish that needs a crunchy element

Quail eggs are tiny but add huge visual impact