The Perfect Salad

From the country…

Lately we have been enjoying greens with our meals. After a long monotonous winter of storage vegetables (potatoes, squash, potatoes, turnip, potatoes, beets and more potatoes) a fresh bowl of anything green is more than welcomed. Most of the greens in this salad however, are grown indoors without the help of Mother Nature. The greenhouse hasn’t started pumping out the lettuce and the cold frames (although seeded) are just sitting around waiting for that lovely warmth to come back.

Our springish salad consists of baby raddichio (over wintered in the cold frames), pea shoots, sunflower greens, rapini sprouts, arugula sprouts, China rose radish sprouts, red clover sprouts and lettuce micro greens (all grown in house). The combination of different tastes and textures make for a tasty, crisp mix. The sunflower sprouts have a nutty edge to them, the raddichio has a slight bitterness, the pea shoots are so tender with a really fresh pea taste, the arugula gives the salad some edge, rapini adds a cabbage zing and the radish brings the kick.

For the salad in the picture(below) I made a raspberry vinaigrette. Salad dressings are fairly easy to make and once you start, buying salad dressing will be a thing of the past.

Raspberry Vinaigrette.

So the thing with this recipe is I really don’t measure. Just slap stuff together until it tastes good. Start with some good quality olive oil in a mason jar(jar size depends on how much you are making), add some white (or black) balsamic vinegar (more olive oil, less viniger), Add some raspberries (I thawed out some frozen ones, fresh would do fine too) and honey for sweetness. Now the trick to a really voluminous dressing is a submersion (or stick) blender. Place the blender in the jar and blend away. Now taste the science experiment and add any more of the above ingredients until you reach your dressing nirvana. Some may like it sweeter, while others may like it a bit more tart. Enjoy!