Turkey, potato and walnut salad

Earlier, in the cooking with leftover turkey entry, I showed you two ways to make good use of scrap turkey meat left over from the holidays. Here’s a third way — a turkey, potato and walnut salad. But there’s really more to this recipe than the intention not to be wasteful. I’m actually training myself to like raw vegetables.

I’m Asian and raw vegetable salads aren’t an Asian thing. I grew up with cooked vegetables in my soup, in stews, in sauteed dishes and in stir fries. But, you know, even as early as grade school I already learned that by cooking vegetables, much of the nutrients are lost. In fact, I’ve trained myself to wash vegetables before cutting them because washing after cutting means you lose nutrients unnecessarily. I’m still Asian and I always will be and I’ll probably always cook my vegetables 90% of the time. But it won’t hurt to add raw vegetables to my favorite dishes once in a while, will it? You still can’t make me eat celery and carrot sticks but I’m learning to love sliced raw celery stalks in my potato salad.

For the basic turkey and potato salad recipe, click here. The only difference between the older recipe and this one is the addition of MORE sliced celery stalks and chopped walnuts. How much celery and how much walnuts? That is entirely up to you, really. If you’re into celery stalks, add as much as you like but remember that raw vegetables spoil faster than cooked vegetables and you might not be able to store your salad as long as you can if it didn’t have any celery in it.  

As for the walnuts, half a cup of chopped walnuts for every kilo of potatoes is a good proportion for me. Add or subtract according to your preference.

What about the lettuce in the photo? Like I said, I’m training myself to eat more raw vegetables so I ate my turkey, potato and walnut salad with all those green leaves. They make a great combination but even without the lettuce, the salad rocks.