Category: salad

This post has been sitting in my drafts folder for well over a year. (Can that really be right? Yes, it is, horrifyingly.) I started writing it when Luciano and Eliane were leaving Brisbane to go back to Brazil. They’d often asked me for recipes for the salads I brought to lab parties, and I wanted to write the recipes down for them as a farewell present. Then I couldn’t work out how to write an intro paragraph that would convey just how much I loved them and would miss them when they left, so I wrote the recipe part, stored it in the drafts folder, and put off writing the personal part. I should have just written “I love you and I’ll miss you!” and published it.

I love the fact that academia has let me be friends with so many lovely people from all over the world, but I hate that everyone (including me) always moves away, eventually. Sure, I now have places to stay in a dozen different countries when I travel, but I’d swap that in a second for all my scattered friends from the last decade or so suddenly deciding to move to Melbourne together. I’m a crappy email correspondent, so I know I don’t say this (or anything else) often enough, but I hope you all know that I miss you like hell.

 

Anyway, I’m dusting this draft off now because Begoña is going to come over on the weekend to cook with me and we’ll make a couple of salads, so I was looking through my old recipes to work out which ones we might make. Bego, here are some possibilities!

Almost all of the salads I make in this style are just variants of the same master salad, which combines the five components below. They last well, so are good for taking to parties or barbeques, and they’re substantial enough that leftovers make good lunches.

1. A grain. You can use wheat grains, spelt or farro, barley, quinoa (white, red or black, or some combination of the three), cousous, israeli couscous, fregola sarda, burgul, freekeh, red or brown rice, orzo, even ravioli. Cook the grain, drain it, and if you think the grains might stick together, toss it immediately with a little dressing.

2. Vegetables. Raw or cooked, commonly roasted. There should be more vegetable than grain in the salad. I try to chose a seasonal combination from veggies like tomatoes, capsicums, zucchini, eggplant, spinach, chard, radicchio, pumpkin, butternut squash, sweet potato, asparagus, broad beans, peas, mushrooms, cucumbers and fennel.

To roast, I generally cut the vegetable up into small pieces, toss them with oil, salt, pepper, and sometimes a dash of vinegar, spread them out on a baking tray, and cook them in the oven at 180 C until they are browned and softened – 20-60 minutes, depending on the vegetable and the size of the pieces. Make sure you spread them out so they roast rather than steam. I often roast halved tomatoes more slowly at about 110 C, so they lose more of their juice and taste more intense.

3. Herbs. For greenery and flavour. I almost always use chopped soft herbs, especially parsley and mint, but sometimes also chives, basil or dill.

4. Protein. Usually white cheese of some kind (feta, goats cheese, fresh ricotta, ricotta salata), nuts (toasted pine nuts, roughly chopped hazelnuts, slivered almonds), chickpeas, smoked fish, or some combination of these.

5. Dressing. Oil (usually olive oil, but I also sometimes use hazelnut oil or macadamia oil) and acid (usually sherry vinegar, cider vinegar, or lemon juice). Sometimes the residual olive oil and vinegar from the roasted vegetables is suffient; other times I taste the salad and then shake up a little extra oil, vinegar and mustard and stir through. If I’m using a nut oil or lemon juice I add that at the end, rather than during roasting. Occasionally I use home-made pesto, thinned a bit with lemon juice and/or olive oil or a nut oil, as a dressing.

 

There are infinite variations possible, but here are a few combinations I’ve tried before and liked.

A green and white spring salad

white quinoa, cooked
broad beans, double-podded (or use green peas)
asparagus, blanched or grilled and cut into 3 cm pieces
parsley, mint and chives, finely chopped
preserved lemon, finely chopped
feta
good olive oil, lemon juice and a pinch of salt, mixed to emulsify

Combine everything and toss well. Taste and add more lemon juice or other seasoning as needed. Great eaten with a piece of salmon and maybe some grilled zucchini.

A summer salad with roast vegetables

israeli couscous
ripe roma or cherrry tomatoes, halved and slow-roasted with olive oil and sherry vinegar
slender zucchini, cut into coins about 3 mm thick, tossed with garlic-infused olive oil, salt and pepper, and roasted at 180C till soft and golden
eggplant, sliced, grilled, and cut into pieces
crumbled goats’ cheese or grated ricotta salata
parsley and basil
olive oil and sherry vinegar

Cook the couscous until al dente, drain, then toss with a little olive oil and sherry vinegar to stop it sticking together. Combine with the roasted vegetables, herbs and cheese. The oil and vinegar remaining from cooking the vegetables may be sufficient dressing; if not, whisk up a little more oil and/or vinegar and toss it through.

A quick summer salad

fregola sarda
cucumber, halved lengthways, seeds removed, sliced
sun-dried tomatoes, chopped
avocado, chopped
feta, crumbled
parsley and mint
olive oil and lemon juice, combined

Cook the fregola sarda until al dente. Drain well, then mix with olive oil and lemon juice and set aside. It’s best if you can do this in a wide bowl so it cools quickly. Stir it now and then while it’s cooling, to make sure it doesn’t clump.

Toss the fregola sarda with the vegetables, herbs, cheese and avocado. If the avocado is very ripe it will probably mostly melt into the salad as you toss it, making an almost creamy dressing. Taste for lemon and seasoning and add more if needed.

An autumn salad

barley, cooked and drained
butternut squash, cubed, tossed with garlic olive oil, cider vinegar, salt and pepper, and roasted until softened and browned
slender zucchini, cut into coins about 3 mm thick, tossed with garlic-infused olive oil, salt and pepper, and roasted till soft and golden
chickpeas, cooked (if from a tin, drain and rinse them)
feta or goats’ cheese, crumbled
parsley and chives
olive oil, cider vinegar, seed mustard

Toss the barley with the other ingredients.  Make a dressing of olive oil, cider vinegar and a little bit of seed mustard, and toss through.

A winter salad

wheat grains, cooked
kabocha squash, cubed and roasted as for autumn salad
chestnut mushrooms, finely sliced (can either saute or leave them uncooked)
lightly wilted spinach or chard
radicchio, a few torn leaves
hazelnuts, toasted and chopped
aged goats cheese, crumbled
olive oil, hazelnut oil, cider vinegar

Toss the wheat grains with the vegetables, hazelnuts and cheese. Whisk up the dressing of olive oil, hazelnut oil and cider vinegar, and toss through salad.

 

Other salads in this vein from my archives:

Couscous, chard, feta and pomegranate salad
Red quinoa, cauliflower, green garlic and feta salad
Couscous, eggplant, dried fig and orange salad
Pearl couscous, roast vegetable and harissa salad
Spiced burgul salad
Burgul, tuna and parsley salad

And from elsewhere on the web:

Farro salad with roasted red grapes, kale and swiss chard
Wild rice salad with miso dressing
Bulguf ‘pilaf’ with swiss chard and dried apricots
Quinoa with peas, beans, lemon and herbs
Red quinoa and quail egg salad
Beetroot and moghrabieh salad
Roast cauliflower, chickpea and quinoa salad
Quinoa salad with persian dried lime
Green bean and black quinoa salad
Quinoa with currants, dill and zucchini
Bulgur salad with corn, feta and basil
Brown rice with shiitake, ginger and arame
Hazelnut and chard ravioli salad

I’m going on holiday tomorrow (yesssssssssssssss), and still need to pack, so this is a quick one. We have been rocking the salads recently. Love spring, love the greens my garden is producing; love love love. This salad is crunchy, fresh and light, with a savoury base note contributed by the chard, onions and chickpeas.

125 g couscous
1 handful pinenuts, toasted
1 large handful each of mint and parsley, leaves picked and chopped
1 large onion, sliced finely
olive oil
3 cloves garlic, chopped finely
4 large leaves of yellow-stemmed chard, stemmed and chopped
1 tin chickpeas, drained and rinsed well
80 g feta
seeds from 1 small pomegranate

Cook the couscous according to the directions on the packet. Place in a salad bowl and toss with the pinenuts, mint and parsley.

Heat a little olive oil in a pan and fry the onion over moderate heat until golden and soft. Add the garlic and cook another couple of minutes. Add the chard and chickpeas, and cook until the chard is wilted. Tip over the couscous, and toss together.

Strew crumbled feta and the pomegranate seeds over everything. Eat.

Serves 2 very generously.

I normally eat potatoes about five or six times a year – they don’t fit in with the kind of food I cook, and I’m never really sure what to do with them. But three times this year I’ve found myself craving, and making, a version of this salad. I like it because it uses kipflers, amongst the tastier of the potatoes, and because its green vegetable-to-potato ratio is about 3:1. And then there’s the whole yoghurt and mustard thing which cleaves fairly closely to my notion of bliss.

It’s based, with minor modification, on this recipe from Martha Rose Shulman, which I first came across linked in Kathryn Elliot‘s twitter feed. I add peas, use plain yoghurt rather than low-fat (Jalna biodynamic organic is good), go overboard on mustard, wilt the spinach slightly – they’re the main differences, I think.

Salad
about 10 kipflers of medium size
several large handfuls of baby spinach
2 solid fistfuls of green beans, topped and snapped in half
a cup or two of frozen peas, defrosted in hot water
a generous cup of finely chopped herbs (chives, parsley, mint, dill are good)
half a red onion, sliced paper-thin and soaked in sherry vinegar for 10 minutes

Optional: feta cheese or hot-smoked salmon

Dressing
1/4 cup of plain yoghurt
3 teaspoons garlic-infused olive oil
2 ludicrously heaped teaspoons of seed mustard
juice of half a lemon
a good glug of sherry vinegar
sea salt and black pepper

Scrub the kipflers, halve lengthwise, then cut into 2 cm chunks. Steam them for 10 mins (Shulman) to 25 mins (my experience, using bamboo steamers), or until they are tender.

While the potatoes are cooking, place the spinach in the bottom of a large salad bowl. Make the dressing by whisking together the yoghurt, olive oil, sherry vinegar, lemon juice, mustard, salt and pepper.

When the potatoes are done, remove them from the heat and dump them on top of the spinach. Add enough of the dressing to coat, and toss. The spinach should wilt slightly with the heat of the potatoes.

Cook the green beans in boiling water for 3 minutes. Add the peas for the last minute. Drain and refresh under cold water, then add to the salad bowl and toss again.

Add the finely chopped herbs, red onion, and more dressing if you think it is needed, and season well with salt and pepper. Eat warm or at room temperature. If you would like some more protein in it (very sensible), toss through some crumbled feta cheese or flaked hot-smoked salmon.

Makes about 4 largish servings.