Loaded with roasted veggies, healthy grains, savory beans, and two delicious dressings, this Big Cuban Salad will be a crowd-pleasing favorite at home or at your next potluck!
Place ⅓ cup of the raw cashews in a small bowl and cover with very hot water. Set aside to soak while you make the sweet potatoes, quinoa, and black beans.
Seasoned Quinoa
Combine vegetable broth, cumin, minced garlic, and salt in a medium saucepan and bring to a simmer over medium-high heat.
Stir in quinoa and cover. Reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes.
Remove from heat, but keep the lid on. Allow quinoa to sit for 15-20 minutes. Fluff with fork and stir in chopped green onions.
Roasted Sweet Potatoes
Preheat oven to 400°F | 205°C.
In a gallon-sized resealable bag (or large bowl) toss the cubed sweet potatoes with the cinnamon, ginger, and olive oil until evenly covered.
Pour sweet potatoes onto an unlined heavy metal sheet pan. Lightly sprinkle evenly with kosher salt.
Put in oven and roast sweet potatoes for about 10 minutes, then toss gently and return to oven for another 8-10 minutes, until fork tender. Remove from oven and allow to cool.
Black Beans:
While Sweet potatoes are roasting and the quinoa is finishing up, sauté finely chopped ½ onion in olive oil until translucent. Add minced garlic clove and chopped red pepper and continue to cook, stirring frequently, until onion begins to turn brown.
Add black beans, cumin and salt and cook for 5 more minutes, until beans are tender.
Set aside and allow to cook completely.
Cilantro-Avocado Dressing
Combine all ingredients and blend with a small beverage or immersion blender until smooth. It should be about the same thickness and consistency as a good milkshake.
If mixture is too thick, add a little extra water.
Spicy Maple-Lemon Cashew Sauce
Remember those cashews you started soaking at the beginning of all this?Drain the soaked cashews and throw them into a blender with the remaining Cashew Sauce ingredients(i.e., garlic, red pepper flakes, olive oil, lemon juice and maple syrup).Puree on high until smooth. Season to taste.
Assemble Salad
Evenly distribute greens in the bottom of very large, flat-bottom bowl.
Mound the prepared Quinoa in the middle.
Arrange the following in concentric circles radiating from the middle; ½ black beans, roasted sweet potatoes, ½ black beans, tomato halves.
Drizzle liberally with Cilantro-Avocado Dressing, Spicy Maple-Lemon Cashew Sauce.
Garnish with chopped cilantro. Serve remaining Spicy Maple-Lemon Cashew Sauce on the side.
Video
Notes
This salad is great whether you assemble it with warm or cold quinoa and sweet potatoes - it's just a matter of personal preference. We like to make all the components for this salad (i.e., the seasoned quinoa, roast sweet potatoes, black beans, and dressings) the day before and chill them. Then, on the day of, the whole thing can be assembled in a matter of minutes.