Tag: Salad

green salad with garlicky red wine mustard vinaigrette

salad lettuce salmon avocado pepitas mustard dressings salad greens pumpkin seeds smoked salmon

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This dressing is one that I make a lot of at once, and then keep in the refrigerator to use all the time. It keeps really well, is yummy and creamy without any eggs or cream in it (mustard is the emulsifying agent), and is great with a variety of different salads. These are two of my favorites—to eat as a meal, with the fish and avocado, or to make more simply, and to eat as a side with soup, beans, or open-faced toast sandwiches. You can also toss the dressing onto steamed broccoli or green beans and top them with toasted green pumpkin seeds.

dressing

6 tablespoons red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
4 medium cloves garlic, chopped coarsely
1 teaspoon sea salt or kosher salt
1-2 tablespoons honey
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½ cup extra-virgin olive oil

Put first 5 ingredients in a blender and blend until completely smooth. Slowly pour in oil to make a creamy emulsion. Taste and season with more salt or honey if it needs it.

salad—for a meal, with smoked salmon and avocado

1 large head lettuce, washed, dried, and torn into bite-sized pieces, or a large bowl of baby salad greens or stemmed baby spinach
½ cup pepitas (green pumpkin seeds), toasted in a skillet until puffed and golden
1 avocado, peeled and cut into cubes
1-2 cups kippered salmon, flaked (I love to use buttery-rich Alaskan king salmon)

1. Toss the salad greens with dressing to your taste, then add the avocado and salmon. Toss again.
2. Sprinkle toasted pumpkin seeds over the salad and serve.

salad—as a side, with toasted pumpkin seeds

1 head lettuce, washed, dried, and torn into bite-sized pieces, or a bowl of baby salad greens or stemmed spinach
¼ cup pepitas (green pumpkin seeds), toasted in a skillet until puffed and golden brown

Toss the salad greens with dressing to your taste, then sprinkle the pumpkin seeds over the salad and serve.

cabbage salad with lime and oregano

cabbage salad scallions oregano lime

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This salad recipe is based on one in Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Suppers book. It’s fine even the next day as leftovers—it just gets to be more like cabbage pickles. It’s fantastic with homemade refried beans, or on top of the beans piled on a tostada… add diced avocados and you have a feast!! See the recipe for “tostadas three ways” for all kinds of recipes to serve with this salad!

If you’re serving this salad on its own (not with refried beans or something else), you can sprinkle it with toasted green pumpkin seeds (pepitas) for a little extra pizzaz. See instructions, below.

Tip: in case you like to make things occasionally with lime juice (like guacamole, or this recipe, for example) but you don’t always have limes hanging around, you can buy a big bag of them from Costco, squeeze them right away, and freeze the juice in small containers. Then you can just pop a container in the microwave for a few seconds when you need some fresh lime juice.

6 cups finely sliced green or red cabbage
1 ½ teaspoons sea salt or kosher salt
2 teaspoons sugar
¼ cup finely diced white onion or scallion
2 pinches dried oregano
2 to 4 tablespoons chopped cilantro (if you have it—but go ahead and make this salad without cilantro if you don’t have any hanging around.)
1/3 cup lime juice

Toss the cabbage with the salt and onion and sugar. Add the rest of the salad ingredients, toss well, and taste carefully. Does it need more sugar? More salt? More lime? Add until you’re happy with the flavors. Its should be bright and pickle-y, not bland. Refrigerate until ready to use.

toasted green pumpkin seeds
Put a ½ cup or so of green pumpkin seeds (not the ones from your Jack-O-Lantern, but the kind you can buy in bulk at the grocery store) in a skillet over medium-high heat and toast, stirring fairly constantly (with your extractor fan running for the inevitable smoke) until the seeds swell up and turn golden around the edges. Some will make popping noises. Pour onto a plate and let cool for a bit to crisp up before serving.

lemony chickpeas in Sicilian mint sauce

salad beans mint lemon bean chickpea garbanzo

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This recipe is very loosely based on a grilled chicken recipe in Lynne Rosetto Kaspar’s The Italian Country Table. My friend Andi (a local-food lover and wonderful cook living in Vermont) sent me her version of the recipe and suggested I use fresh Alaskan fish with the mint sauce—but since I happened to have the cookbook, too, I read the recipe and thought it would be fun to try it with chickpeas!

My recent discovery (in the Tuscan white bean soup with greens recipe) about soaking dried beans in salt water instead of plain water works really well for chickpeas, too! The chickpeas’ skins soften deliciously, and they cook in much less time than usual. (I learned this trick in a recent Cook’s Illustrated magazine.)

I wouldn’t ever cook such a small batch of chickpeas—I soak and cook large pots of them at a time, and then freeze them (after step 2) for different applications. Two cups of chickpeas will make something like 4 to 5 cups of cooked chickpeas. So if you make a big batch (8 or 10 cups’ worth), just scoop out what you need for this salad, then freeze the rest in labeled containers, all ready to make hummus, or the chickpea salad with kalamata olives (also on this website).

the chickpeas

sea salt or kosher salt
2 cups dried chickpeas
1 large onion, peeled and quartered
4 cloves garlic, peeled
1 bay leaf
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1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
shredded zest of 1 medium lemon
½ teaspoon dried oregano
1/8 teaspoon freshly-ground pepper
½ teaspoon salt

the mint sauce

1 medium red onion, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
¼ teaspoon sugar
¼ cup red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1 cup packed mint leaves, finely chopped

1. Rinse the chickpeas in a colander. Dissolve 3 tablespoons salt in 4 quarts cold water in large bowl or container. Add chickpeas and soak, at room temperature, for at least 8 and up to 24 hours. Drain and rinse well.
2. Put the chickpeas in a pot and cover with cold water by a couple of inches. Add the quartered onion, garlic, and bay leaves, making sure the water covers the onions. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer, partially covered, until the beans are tender. This could take 30 minutes to 1½ hours, depending on the size of the beans and how old they are. I’ve found, though, that the brining step really shortens the cooking time—so if you’ve cooked chickpeas before and they’ve taken over an hour, start checking at 30 or 40 minutes. I was surprised when I did this the first time! When the beans are tender enough to easily squish between your tongue and the roof of your mouth, turn the heat off. If you have time, let the beans sit in their liquid with the aromatics until cool. Remove the quartered onions and whole garlic cloves and discard. Drain the chickpeas, RESERVING THE LIQUID. You won’t need the liquid for this recipe, but it makes a fantastic vegetable stock for soups, stews, and whatever you would normally use vegetable or chicken stock. Freeze it in labeled containers indefinitely.
3. Toss the chickpeas with the oil, lemon zest, oregano, pepper, and salt. Marinate at room temperature for an hour or so, or if you’ll not be making it right away, let it marinate in the refrigerator up to overnight. When you’re ready to serve them, warm them to room temperature or a little warmer.
4. About 30 minutes before eating, stir together the minced onion, garlic, sugar, vinegar, and salt and pepper in a small bowl. Let stand 20 minutes, then whisk in the oil. Toss the mint into the mixture, stir well, and then spoon over the chickpeas. Mix well, and taste for seasoning: add more vinegar, salt and pepper to taste.

roasted eggplant salad with pine nuts & capers

garlic salad eggplant capers roasted vegetables pine nuts

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This is my answer to caponata—the Italian eggplant relish/salad with capers, raisins, and vinegar… I like to taste the eggplant more than you tend to when it’s mixed with all those really strong flavors. So this has less vinegar, no raisins, but still has great flavor!!

It’s a variation on a salad in Annie Somerville’s Everyday Greens. The nice thing about it is that you roast the eggplant slices, so you’re not frying it in quarts of oil (which the eggplant soaks up like mad). It’s quick and easy and healthy. You can even roast the eggplant slices the day before, and make the salad later. Serve this with another salad, like a bean salad or a green salad—or how about a pile of fresh snap peas--for a complete meal!

2 pounds fresh eggplant, sliced ½-inch thick
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil (or olive oil infused with roasted garlic)
½ tablespoon minced garlic (if not using garlic oil, above)
¼ teaspoon sea salt or kosher salt
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1 medium or large red onion, finely diced (1-2 cups; to your taste)
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons capers, drained and rinsed
½ bunch Italian (flat-leaved) parsley, or ¼ cup basil leaves, chopped finely
½ teaspoon salt or kosher salt
2 tablespoons pine nuts, toasted until golden in a dry skillet

1. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Toss the eggplant in a large bowl with the oil, garlic, and ¼ teaspoon salt. The slices won’t really be evenly coated with oil—there will be splotches of oil here and there on some slices—but that’s OK. Just mix them around the best you can.
2. Line rimmed baking sheets with parchment, or spray them with cooking spray. Lay the eggplant slices in a single layer on the baking sheets and roast for 10 minutes. Rotate the pans and roast for 10 more minutes. Check for tenderness at this point—if you’re using Japanese eggplants, they may be done, but the bigger globe eggplants will take longer. Keep roasting them until they are soft and tender, rotating every 10 minutes or so. It took my eggplants a little more than 30 minutes, but just see what yours taste like. You can do this step ahead of time and mix the salad up the following day.
3. When the eggplant is cool enough to handle, slice it into ¼-inch strips.
4. Put the diced onion into a small heatproof bowl, and pour boiling water over the top, to cover. Let them sit for 30 seconds, then drain the onions. Toss them with 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar.
5. Combine the eggplant, capers, parsley or basil, and onions in a large bowl. Toss gently, and let marinate for 30 minutes or so. Season to taste with salt—start with ½ teaspoon and add more if necessary. You may want to add a little more red wine vinegar, too. If the salad is too tart, you can add a pinch of sugar.
6. Garnish with toasted pine nuts and serve!

potato and onion salad with smoked salmon

potatoes onion salad lettuce salmon fish

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This salad is wonderful with new little peanut potatoes! But any kind of waxy potato will work wonderfully (even the purple ones!). You can use any kind of flaky smoked fish for this recipe, but I’m more likely to have salmon than anything else! If you don’t eat fish, you can substitute 2 tablespoons rinsed, drained capers for a briny flavor (along with the olives).

The recipe is based on one in Deborah Madison’s Local Flavors. It looks like a lot of lettuce, but the hot potatoes wilt it down to almost nothing—it’s just a wonderful green color without much bulk, once you mix everything together.

1 ½ pounds peanut potatoes (or other waxy variety)
sea salt or kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
1 large onion, or 2 small onions, sliced thinly into rounds (red onions are lovely!)
3 tablespoons white wine vinegar
¼ teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
16 green olives, pitted and halved (you can use black kalamata olives if that’s all you have, but the green are very pretty)
6 ounces smoked salmon, flaked
8 cups lettuce, washed, dried, and torn into bite-sized pieces

1. Cover the potatoes with cold salted water and bring to a boil. While they are cooking, toss the onion with the vinegar, sugar, and ½ teaspoon salt and let sit for a few minutes. Then add the oil, olives, and fish (or capers).
2. When the potatoes are fork-tender, drain them, then cut in half lengthwise if they are small. Cut into bite-sized pieces if they are bigger. While still hot, add them to the bowl along with the lettuce. Turn gently with a rubber scraper. Taste for salt and season with pepper.

tender spring greens with sorrel dressing

salad lettuce sorrel

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(contributed by Nancy)

I can’t think of anything better than tender young lettuce.  This dressing really shows it off and has a delightful tang.
Recipe adapted from Homegrown: A Growing Guide for Creating a Cook’s Garden

¼ cup sour cream
¼ cup plain whole-milk yogurt
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 garlic clove, minced
1 teaspoon red-wine vinegar
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
pinch of coarse sea salt
⅓ cup sorrel leaves, finely chopped
4 large handfuls tender spring lettuce, torn into bite-size pieces
1 small bunch chives, roughly chopped
4 sprigs dill, roughly chopped
freshly ground black pepper

1. In a blender, blend the sour cream, yogurt, mustard, garlic, vinegar, olive oil, salt and sorrel until very smooth, about 1 minute. Thin with water if it’s too thick. Set aside.
2. In a large mixing bowl, toss the lettuce, chives and dill with about half of the dressing; add more if desired, just enough to coat the leaves. Season with salt and pepper and serve immediately.

carrot salad with green chili and cilantro

carrots salad cilantro carrot spicy

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(contributed by Nancy)

This is the one shredded salad you want to make right before you serve it, because the carrots bleed once they’re shredded and salted. It is adapted from The Vegetarian Option by Simon Hopkinson.

4 cups peeled and grated carrots
1 1/2 teaspoons sea salt
1 1/2 teaspoons superfine sugar
juice of 1 small lime
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
cilantro leaves picked from 4 or 5 bushy sprigs
1 green serrano or 1/2 jalapeno, seeded

1.  In a large bowl, mix the grated carrot together with the salt, sugar and lime juice. Leave to macerate for at least 30 minutes.
2.  Meanwhile, place the coriander seeds in a small, dry skillet and gently toast them over low heat until they smell very good, but be careful not to burn them. Tip into a mortar and lightly crush with the pestle.
3.  Now mince the cilantro and chili together. Add to the carrots together with the coriander seeds and mix well. Turn into a serving dish and enjoy.