This easy and delicious orange and red pepper salad recipe is the perfect winter salad. Bursting with juicy oranges, roasted red peppers, olives, tuna and eggs, this salad is the perfect healthy meal.
Recently Madrid Food Tour helped organize a Tapas Workshop for 20 attendees of a big conference taking place in the city. With the collaboration of the famous local chef Rosa Tovar and wine expert/sommelier Raul Calle, we put on a really fun event for a group of people from all around the world.
I was lucky to be in charge of translating the workshop's recipes, and they all sounded delicious. But one recipe stood out from the start. Rosa's orange and red pepper salad recipe took me back to Andalusia without even tasting it. I could just imagine the bright orange slices, colorful red peppers, olives, and quail eggs would come together in harmony for the perfect winter salad (ideally enjoyed on an Andalusian terrace with some flamenco music playing in the background).
Why a winter salad? Well, here in Spain, oranges are a winter fruit. The best and juiciest Valencia oranges (the ones actually from Valencia, Spain) come into season at the beginning of December, giving Spaniards across the country a healthy dose of vitamin C throughout the cold winter season. Olives are also a winter fruit, although available year round.
When we finally made the salad in the workshop, my initial hypothesis was confirmed, it was one of the most delicious salads I've ever tried (and super easy to make).
More Spanish Salad Recipes
If you like this easy Spanish salad, don’t miss these other salad recipes.
- Ensaladilla Rusa: This popular Spanish tapa is a mayonnaise-based potato and tuna salad.
- Avocado and Tuna Salad: High quality canned tuna combines with avocado and orange in this delicious salad.
- Spanish Winter Salad: Red cabbage, orange, and pomegranate make this salad beautiful and delicious.
- Lentil Salad Recipe: A quick and easy cold lentil salad that makes the perfect healthy meal.
Orange and Red Pepper Salad Recipe
Ingredients
- 350 grams jarred piquillo peppers and their liquid sub roasted red peppers if you can't get piquillo
- 3 roasted garlic cloves
- Salt to taste
- ½ teaspoon cumin seeds
- Freshly ground black pepper
- ½ cup extra virgin olive oil
- 2-3 spring onions finely chopped
- 3 juicy oranges peeled and cut into sections (after peeling, use a very sharp knife and cut between the skin of each segment so there is no skin or seeds in the salad)
- 1 four-ounce can of tuna in olive oil or in escabeche drained and broken up
- 16 hard-boiled quail eggs or 4 hard-boiled eggs (if using large eggs cut into quarters)
- 4 ounces arbequina olives If you can't find these you can substitute another variety
Instructions
- Cut the peppers into thick strips, and put them in your serving dish.
- Pound the garlic, the salt, the cumin seeds and black pepper to taste in a mortar. When the cumin has been well pounded, add the olive oil and as much of the peppers’ liquid as you’d like, which will give the dressing a nice flavor.
- Sprinkle the spring onions over the peppers, add the orange segments and the tuna. Pour the dressing over the top and decorate with the hard-boiled eggs and the olives.
Nutrition
Easy, quick, and delicious. Every ingredient in this colorful orange and red pepper salad just works perfectly. I'd recommend using the quail eggs if you can, they are bite-sized and easier to eat than a quartered chicken egg.
What is your favorite winter salad recipe?
Carl
The orange and red pepper salad is one of my favourite zesty recipies.
The first time I did it was in the summer and it was a firm party pleaser ..
100% of people who tasted it recreated it back at their house and loved it .
Thanks and keep recipies coming.
Thanks again
Grace
Sounds interesting Lauren. I think I'll try this!
Paddy Waller
Love oranges in salad. This sounds really tasty...will have to get my culinary hat on!