My Go-To Salad

So, Ms. Jessie at The Brown Bag is doing a salad-a-day challenge for February and I promised I try and put up some recipes for salads in the spirit of things. Unfortunately, I haven't had a salad each day this month, but I have for the last two days. Sigh. There's little incentive for salad around these parts: two kids that don't eat salad plus eating veg at home (ie eating lots of veggies). But I like salads and have kinda missed them. This week, I put salad on the menu.

The Dressing:
I tend to like sweet, vinegary dressings. I came across this one several years ago in the vegetarian grilling book. The salad itself had arugula, roasted red peppers, marinated and grilled shallots, pine nuts and feta. It actually was the marinade for the shallots, but I had a little extra leftover and used it as a dressing. Yum! So, it has become one of my staple salad dressings.

1/4 C. Olive Oil
1/4 C. Balsamic Vinegar
1 Tbsp Brown Sugar
Salt and Pepper to Taste

All you have to do is whisk it all together and toss it with your salad.

I feel like a good salad has a few major components: greens, mix-ins, crunch, and cheese.

The Greens
So, this is the thing. I don't really love the ranch on iceberg with carrots and mushrooms and a tomato. I mean, it has it's place, but I like my salads to have a little more personality. I usually go for spinach instead of lettuce - it's heartier and so full of nutrition. But you can do this with almost any type of leafy green. My second choice would be the "spring mix" or whatever they are calling it these days or arugula.

Mix-ins
Sounds like cold stone, eh? Well, this is the best part of making a salad. I look through the fridge to see what I have. I usually try to shy away from the typical carrots and celery and go for more interesting components: strawberries, blueberries, roasted red peppers, pears, apples, thinly sliced red onion, avocado, nice ripe grape tomatoes, dried fruit, hard-boiled eggs, bacon. I don't go wild here. Just a couple mix-ins. Maybe only one. If you want to make it a entree salad you can also mix in leftover chicken or whatever meat you have.

Crunch
This would be what croutons are usually for, but I have a hard time with croutons. You can't puncture them with your fork that well and if you can't do that then you have to try and balance them on your fork with the other salad components. I usually just end up eating them alone and I think that really misses the point. I typically will go for nuts of some sort: pine nuts, pecans, walnuts, almonds, cashews - all toasted. But, you can use anything that sounds good to achieve the crunch. Some other ideas might be chow mein noodles, tortilla chips, fried onions...

Nuts are also great candied: heat the 1/3 C. nuts in a small frying pan until fragrant. Sprinkle with sugar (a tablespoon or so) and stir until the sugar is melted and the nuts are browned. Remove from heat and spread on wax paper that has been sprayed with non-stick spray until cool.

Cheese
I like cheese in my salads. Depending on the other ingredients I might use shredded parmesan, chopped mozzarella, feta, blue, gorgonzola, smoked gouda. I don't really like chevre so I wouldn't use it, but it would probably work well, too, if you like it.


So here are some of my favorite mix-in, crunch, cheese combinations to go with the dressing and greens.

Blueberries, parmesan and candied nuts or pine nuts
Strawberries, blue cheese, almonds
Pears, blue cheese, candied walnuts
Roasted red peppers, feta, pine nuts
Roasted red peppers, tomato, mozzarella, fried onions (the kind you use for green bean casserole)