Quick Mango Ginger Bowls

Lately I have been feeling health-conscious and so we try to have at least one salad everyday for lunch. I am also spending any free time in thinking and reading about salads in my cookbook collection and blogs. At times I feel guilty that I am spending so much of my time in experimenting with food and reading food-blogs when I should be doing other more important stuff. But now I feel virtuous that I can make use of all the knowledge and inspiration that I get from reading about food can be applied for a good-cause i.e. improve health of me and my family.

Some time and effort devoted in making a salad means you do not have to think too much about how to get your five a day serving of fruits and veg. You can serve salad as a main-course or a side-dish or even as a dessert. We had this lovely Mango salad for dessert last weekend. I have always loved the mango-ginger combination although I had never tried it before! I added the stem-ginger to our Mango salad to give it an interesting twist.  This is a very refreshing salad which is not only quick to make but very elegant too!

A quick word on Stem Ginger in case you are not familiar with it - basically Ginger pieces that have been preserved in sugar syrup. Stem Ginger is readily available in jars in super-markets in UK and is mainly used in baking cakes and cookies. You can use fresh ginger root that has been cooked in sugar syrup as a substitute or simply flavour the sugar syrup with Ginger powder.

Quick Mango Ginger Bowls

For two servings you will need:

Couple of Ripe Alphonso Mangoes (or any other sweet Mango) - sliced/cubed
Stem Ginger - a chunk along 2 tbsp of syrup used for preserving
Few Pomegranate kernels
Few Basil/Mint leaves sliced plus some more for garnishing
Lemon juice 1 tsp

Chop the stem ginger into smaller pieces. Mix mango slices, stem ginger pieces, pomegranate kernels, sliced Mint/Basil along with some syrup from Stem Ginger. Add some lemon juice. Mix well. Serve the salad into individual bowls and garnish each bowl with mint/basil leaves. Serve chilled.