Salad: The Remix

Posted by Michael on Mar 2, 2010 in Recipes | 0 comments

Recently I’ve started to rethink salad.

What is it that makes a great salad?  The lettuce?  Other vegetables?  Nope.  For me, it’s the little things, the accents if you will.  A properly balanced dressing plus one or two key, strong flavours is what makes it for me.   Lettuce with just basic dressing is, well, pretty basic.   Here in Canada, we’ve got some great stuff to add to our salads so make an effort to add some it the next time you put some greens on a plate.  We’ve got the world’s best bacon, best maple syrup (unless you’re in Vermont, then it’s just really good) and some of the best cheeses.  All great things to toss into or onto a salad.

Variety is the key.  Most grocery stores have cheese counters and bulk foods that allow you to buy very small amounts of great stuff.  With salads in mind, get a few different types of cheese, a few different types of nuts, some sun dried tomatoes and anything else you’ve ever had in your favourite restaurant salad.  It’s those powerful accents that are going to make for a great salad.   Crunch is something to pay attention too as well.   It shouldn’t only come from the greens.   Crispy bacon does the trick, nuts of all kinds are great and Average Betty made a great salad a while back that was topped with toasted tortillas.  Brilliant!

As for the greens, the choices we now have at the average grocery store are pretty impressive.  The bags of lettuce now even have rating scales for taste and texture.   The bag of “Italian Blend” I just bought is rated as a 2 out of five for flavour on a scale of mild (1) to bold (5) and it’s a four out of five on the scale of tender to crunchy.  And yeah, it was pretty crunchy!  Nice.

I don’t often advocate the purchase of food that’s in bags or boxes but these salad mixes are pretty good.  They’re fairly priced considering the variety you often get in them, they’re conveniently pre-cut and pre-washed if “fast food” is what you’re after, and they tend to last well in the sealed bags.   There’s also no preservatives or other garbage, this is just good greens in a bag.

As for the dressing, I always mix my own dressing fresh.  It’s just way too easy to not do it yourself.  The bottled stuff is loaded with chemical thickeners, often synthetic tasting ingredients and just doesn’t have the variety you can whip up on your own depending on your tastes at any given moment.

My favourite salad this week, a multi-part series.

A handful of mixed Italian greens

1 slice bacon, cooked and crumbled

A couple tablespoons blue cheese, crumbled

Dressing:

tiny squirt of smooth dijon mustard

1 teaspoon red wine vinegar

salt and pepper

4 teaspoons olive oil

tiny squirt of maple syrup or honey

Put your greens on a plate.  You’re almost done.  Cool eh?  Mix your dressing by putting dijon, red wine vinegar, salt and pepper in a small bowl.  Whisk in the olive oil and mix until smooth.  Whisk in the maple syrup or honey.   Drizzle most of that over your salad.  Top with blue cheese and bacon and add more dressing if desired.