isalad: Chef Salad Your Way

I was contemplating my waistline in light of a trip to Hawaii.  My diet recipe book advised me to have a Chef's Salad for lunch.  What is a Chef's Salad?  A salad made by a chef:  me––or you, using creative license.
isalad
Greens:
red leaf lettuce cut up
endive sliced
arugula cut up
basil chopped
Add:
red onion chopped
cherry tomatoes halved
mushrooms sliced
ham diced
Alpine Lace cheese chopped
green beans (leftover cooked) chopped
black olives sliced

Dressing:  Pour a couple of tablespoons of good quality olive oil in a bowl.  Add about one tablespoon red wine vinegar, salt, pepper, and small amount minced shallot.  Beat with a wisk or fork until it is creamy and emulsified.  Remove your chef's hat and enjoy.

Brussel Sprouts, Grapes, and Endive Salad

Got Brussel Sprouts?  I was served a version of this salad at the Highland's Inn in Carmel last fall.  Yesterday, with fresh brussel sprouts on hand, I had a hankering for it.  My hubby loved it!!

Brussel Sprouts, Grapes, and Endive Salad with lemon parsley vinaigrette.

Cook a small serving for two of brussel sprouts in boiling water for five minutes, drain, slice in circles
Slice a handful of red grapes in half
Wash, separate and chop one endive
Add about 2 tablespoons of diced red onion
Sunflower seeds

Dressing:
2 Tablespoons Olive Oil
1 Tablespoon lemon juice or slightly less
Parsley chopped fine
Shallot chopped fine

The combination of endive, red onion, and brussel sprout is complex and satisfying.  The restaurant version included diced pancetta and dry ricotta but the salad is delicious without these two items which you may not have on hand.

Modern Coleslaw

Men love Cabbage Salad.  We are fortunate to have a small food coop that brings us fresh lettuce, arugula, and cabbage from local green houses, even in Winter.  Today, I was talking to my Mom about coleslaw.  She makes the best traditional coleslaw ever.  I decided to make some for lunch, but with a few modern twists.

Modern Coleslaw

1 wedge cabbage, sliced thin and diced
1 carrot, grated
3 green onions, chopped
1 small shallot, sliced and chopped
Red, green, yellow diced peppers (about 1/3 cup)
Broccoli florets sliced thin and chopped (about 1/3 cup)

Dressing:
3 Tablespoons of some combination of the following:
Sour Cream
Mayonaise
Greek Yogurt
1 or 2 teaspoons lemon juice
Dill, chopped
1/2 teaspoon of each salt, sugar, pepper (possibly additional salt)
Pinch curry powder (you won't taste this, it just adds a level of complexity--a friend told me that)

Things you could add to the salad to change the character (but I did not--it looked too delicious as is)
Either halved cherry tomatoes or halved grapes (not both!!)
Sunflower seeds or pumpkin seeds
Chopped avocado or chopped artichoke hearts or chopped green apple

Green Salad with Pears and Grapes

Farm to Table

Last weekend we were invited to dinner with friends and our hostess asked me to bring a salad with fruit (not a fruit salad because I asked.)  This threw me for a loop.  Then she suggested pears.  Ah ha!

Everyone has had pear salad with onions and blue cheese.  It can be tricky because the pears turn brown after they are sliced.  I threw the salad together ten minutes before we left  and took the pears along with me to add just before we sat down along with the emulsified vinaigrette.  The salad was a hit––I think because of the grapes.

Green Salad with Pears and Grapes

Lettuce, endive, basil, all chopped & mixed
Red onion thin sliced and quartered
Avocado diced
Cucumber seeded, thin slice then in half
Red grapes cut in half
Toasted hazelnuts (walnuts would also be good)
Blue cheese crumbled
Pears:  sliced in mouth sized pieces, place in small bowl with a couple of tablespoons of mild (like Meyer) lemon juice or one tablespoon lemon juice and one tablespoon water just before serving.  Toss gently then remove pear slices and let drain briefly on a paper towel before adding to salad.
Dressing:  Olive Oil, red wine vinegar, salt, pepper.  Whip with a fork until thick and creamy.

From Corning Tasting Room

Avocado Salad with Spicy Dressing

A couple of years ago my Mom brought me a recipe that my Oregon cousin's wife had made at a family event.  She specifically asked for the recipe for me because, she said, "it was so colorful."  Today, faced with two ripe avocados I dug around in my hopelessly disorganized recipe cache and found it!  Because we often eat Mexi, I had all the ingredients on hand.  This is the slightly modified version I made:

Sweet cherry tomatoes, halved
Yellow bell pepper, diced
Black beans from can, drained and rinsed
Diced Red Onion
Cilantro, chopped
2 ripe avocados, chopped
Thinly shredded lettuce

Dressing:
lime zest
lime juice
olive oil
salt, pepper
garlic diced to flavor (when you dress salad use your fork to strain out the garlic chunks)
a pinch or so of cayenne

Toss and top with a few broken tortilla chips.  So delicious I can't believe I waited this long to make it.

*If you don't like black beans, you could substitute cooked rice and sliced black olives

Salad for Breakfast?

Breakfast salad with tri-color pepper and mushroom frittata

Again, the theme is spring, enticing because out of reach for us.  When hubby and I were staying in Santa Monica last year, we loved to walk in the balmy air each morning to the Urth Cafe on Main Street.  We sat outside, ate omelets with salad, and eavesdropped as young scruffy men discussed their latest film projects.  At first when I was served salad with an omelet, I thought it was a lazy way of adding an easy side.  I was wrong.  I became an advocate of salad for breakfast with eggs.  It tastes delicious, better than any heavy, fried food, because in the morning we are naturally thirsty.  The salad we were served was a plain lettuce salad of baby greens dressed simply in good quality olive oil and balsamic vinegar.  Since then, I have been a convert to the breakfast salad.  I buy special lettuce just for my breakfast salads.  (Sorry about all the salt and pepper in the photo.)

Ground Hog Day Salad

 For a year this tiny clipping was stuck to the wall in my kitchen.  The salad sounded simple and good.  Last Saturday, craving spring in a snowbound land, I decided to make it.  (The salad was served at Cindy's Backstreet Cafe in St. Helena and reviewed by Michael Bauer.)

Clipping from SF Chron

I ran into trouble immediately.  My arugula was not "pristine," and my artichoke hearts were canned.  I was able to "perfectly cook" the hardboiled eggs and our local bacon is excellent.  In order to keep the dressing light, I used Grape Seed Oil and white wine vinegar with the cumin, coriander, salt and pepper.
I was hopeful, because the salad fit the weekend requirement of being brunch-like by including eggs and bacon.

Eggs and Artichokes

As I made the salad, I felt like a cat in a straight-jacket.  I kept wanting to alter or add to the ingredients.
The finished salad, while beautiful to behold, did not convey the promise of spring.

While I was eating it, I keep thinking that it had not quite come together.  The various parts needed to be crumbled, cut-up, and tossed.  Also, the dressing, while tasty on its own, had not helped the artichoke hearts taste anything but canned.  They were slippery and chewy but not buttery and flavorful.
Today I started over.  Instead of just Arugula, I added spring greens and red onion.  I chopped everything and mixed it well with an olive oil dressing.  Also, I had no bacon since my hubby ate it yesterday--but I didn't need it because hazel nuts add an earthy bacon quality.  I added sunflower seeds and avocado.  Voila!!  Spring in every bite.

Ingredients:
1/2 Arugula chopped
1/2 Spring Mix chopped
Red Onion thin slice halved
4 cherry tomatoes quartered
Hard boiled egg, crumbled
Artichoke hearts dressed and chopped
Avocado
Toasted Hazelnuts, chopped
Sunflower seeds
Olive Oil/Vinegar dressing