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Angela's Orange and Kumara Salad

Angela's Orange and Kumara Salad

Mar 22, 2025

I'm sure you all have special friends that you don't get to see as often as you would like. Angela is one of ours. We all used to live in Whangarei, but we now live seven hours apart which makes getting together difficult. Last week Angela and Gary were on holiday in the BOP and they were able to call in for a long overdue catch up.

When they left I thought about her amazing Kumara and Orange salad. Angela first made it for us about 25 years ago and since then we have both lost the original recipe. I'm sure our version is not identical to the original, but we still love it.

Ingredients

  • 3 Red Kumara cooked until just tender
  • 125gm sour cream or natural yoghurt
  • 1/3 cup of mayonnaise
  • 1tbs whole grain mustard
  • juice of 1 orange
  • finely chopped bunch of spring onions
  • 2 peeled and chopped oranges
  • 75-125 grams of cashew nuts 
  • salt and pepper to taste

Method

  1. Peel and dice kumara into 2-3cm chunks
  2. Place in salted water and cook until just tender
  3. Drain and set aside until cold-lukewarm,
  4. Mix sour cream, mayo, mustard, orange juice, salt and pepper together.
  5. Pour over Kumara and toss.
  6. Add oranges and spring onions. Mix well.
  7. Refrigerate.
  8. Just before serving, toss and sprinkle with chopped cashew nuts.

Photo above: Kumara and Corsica Mandarin Salad. Oranges aren't available on our trees at the moment so we made it with Corsica mandarins. In the rear of the photo is a Kauri tree and a standard Cipo orange tree in a pot.

Variations

  • You can make this with gold or orange kumara but we prefer the red as it is firmer and keeps its shape better
  • Substitute mandarins or tangelos for oranges
  • Add fresh chilli to taste
  • Add chopped  strips of red capsicum
  • Substitute chopped walnuts, pistachios or almond flakes for the the cashew nuts.

 Serving Suggestions

  • Great to serve at a bar-b-que.
  • Goes nicely with any grilled or fried meat, especially pork
  • Serve as a salad to accompany a non meat meal. 

May: We dug up some of our Kumara in the weekend and Corsica Mandarins are ripe, so we made the salad with our tiny Kumara and Corsica Mandarins. Because the Mandarins are a lot smaller than oranges and we love them, we added the juice of 3 mandarins and 4 mandarins. We peeled the membranes off each mandarin segment as it was for a nice dinner. Normally I wouldn't bother, but it does make the mandarin flavour more intense in the salad.

Photo above: Shows a tiny portion of our Kumara harvest this year. This was all of the small ones but we had lots of mega kumara like those seen in the photo.. They are with four Corsica Mandarins.