With the promise of spring and warmer weather, salads and lighter meals grow more appealing. The pictures of crisp green salads seem more appetizing now than the hearty soups and stews that were so satisfying when the weather was cold.
Wilma, a friend of mine from South Africa, shared the following salad recipe with me. She said that at home they would have a salad every evening for the family meal. The salad is usually made of whatever fresh or pickled vegetables they have on hand.
In this salad, she included sweet pickle slices and dressed it with vinaigrette. In South Africa they often use black vinegar in their dressings, which is not available here.
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Mixed vegetable supper salad
With this salad, keep adding ingredients until you have enough for the number of servings you need. If you don’t have a lot of leafy greens, use more cut-up vegetables.
- Mixed greens, red lettuce, curly lettuce, spinach, romaine lettuce and/or leaf lettuce
- Tomatoes, cut into chunks
- Red peppers, cut into slices
- Cucumber, sliced and cut in half, peeled or not peeled depending on preference
- Carrots, cut into one-inch-long (2.5 centimetres) sticks
- Cheddar cheese cut into 1/2 inch (1 cm) cubes
- Sweet pickle slices, cut in half
Add all of the vegetables and toss and serve with your choice of bottled dressing.
Orange walnut salad
Another friend, Betty Lou, introduced me to Kraft Signature Mandarin Orange with Sesame dressing. The following salad is from the Kraft website at www.kraftcanada.com. It includes a dressing recipe but the mandarin orange dressing also works well.
Dressing:
1/3 cup orange juice 75 mL
1/3 cup red wine vinegar 75 mL
1/4 cup oil 60 mL
2 tablespoons 30 mL
sugar
1 teaspoon 5 mL
grated orange peel
Vegetables:
8 cups torn 2 L
crisp salad greens
2 medium cucumbers, thinly sliced
2 cans (284 mL each) mandarin orange segments, drained
or 2-3 fresh, peeled mandarin
oranges
1 cup toasted walnut 250 mL
pieces
1/4 cup sliced green 60 mL
onions
Blend orange juice, vinegar, oil, sugar and orange peel in small bowl or jar. Refrigerate until serving.
Mix salad greens, cucumber, oranges, walnuts and green onions in large salad bowl. Pour dressing over salad. Toss to coat well. Serve immediately.
To toast walnuts, spread in single layer on baking sheet. Bake at 300 F (150 C) for 10-15 minutes or until lightly toasted. Toasting the walnuts makes a big difference in taste.
Vinaigrette
A vinaigrette dressing is a basic oil and vinegar combination, usually three parts of oil to one part of vinegar. Citrus juices can be used instead of, or in combination with, the vinegar. The dressing is often flavoured with herbs, spices, onion, garlic, lemon or orange peel, sugar, salt and pepper.
There are several ways to make a vinaigrette, but traditionally, room temperature oil is slowly added to the vinegar while it is stirred until it emulsifies into a smooth sauce. A little mustard can be added to help maintain the emulsion.
To make a lighter dressing, reduce the amount of oil, but the emulsion is harder to develop and maintain with these dressings.
Make the dressing and then refrigerate it so the flavours blend before serving.
Shake well to mix if the emulsion has broken and the oil and liquid have separated.
Salad ideas
In a recently released book GO – A Culinary Community, I discovered interesting salad ideas.
Brenda Frick’s biodiversity salad is a product of her work in the Plant Science Department at the University of Saskatchewan. She is also a columnist with The Western Producer.
Part of her role at the university is to act as a liaison between organic farmers and researchers. She shares information with the organic farmers in Saskatchewan to help them improve their soil and crops, while maintaining diversity and sustainability on the farm.
Frick also promotes the value of weeds. Wild mustard, lamb’s quarters and dandelions were once food plants. She feels that with a little experimentation, farmers could find benefits of wild plants that grow so well in their fields.
Brenda Frick’s biodiversity salad
Dressing:
1 part organic olive oil
1 part organic balsamic vinegar
1 part finely chopped herbs
Brenda’s favourites are cilantro, dill, basil, parsley, garlic, chives.
Put all dressing ingredients in a jar and shake, then allow the flavours to blend while you forage for salad ingredients.
Salad:
Pick as many of the following as are available:
1 big handful chickweed,
preferably before it gets too
long and stringy
1 big handful lamb’s quarters,
top 4-6 leaves are best
1 big handful red root pigweed,
top 4-6 leaves are best
1 smaller handful radish pods
(they’re nice at the pod
stage, and if you miss a few,
and they go to seed, you’ve
got those for next year)
1 smaller handful nasturtium
flowers and leaves
1 smaller handful violet flowers
(add some rose petals, if you
have them)
1 smaller handful wild mustard
flowers; gather the top inch
of each flowering stem
1 smaller handful dandelion
flowers; best to use just the
yellow part because the
green is gummy and bitter
1 smaller handful each of grated carrot, beet, radish
1 smaller handful of onion (tops, bottoms or flowers before they open), or others in the onion family: garlic scapes (the flower stock of the garlic), scallions, shallots,
chives
Top with lettuce, chard, spinach, beet tops or other greens, if you wish
Wash all the salad ingredients.
Tear into bite-sized pieces, toss with enough dressing to moisten, or serve dressing on the side.
This recipe enables people to savour weeds rather than curse them. Many weeds are filled with vitamins and other nutrients.
This recipe is from GO – A Culinary Community. Serves 4.
Cold barbecue beef salad
This recipe is also taken from the GO – A Culinary Community cookbook. Chef Wade Sirois, who operates Infuse Catering and Forage – Farm to Fork Foods To Go retail, developed it. Sirois uses as many organically grown foods as he can.
Barbecue marinade:
1/2 cup ketchup 125 mL
1/4 cider vinegar 60 mL
1/4 cup brown sugar 60 mL
1/2 small onion, minced
2 tablespoons molasses 30 mL
1 tablespoon ground 15 mL
cumin
1 tablespoon chili 15 mL
powder
1 teaspoon salt 5 mL
2 pounds organic beef 1 kg
flank steak (I used a small
inside round roast)
Stir the marinade ingredients together. Score both sides of the flank steak in a crisscross pattern and slather it with about 1/2 cup (125 mL) of the marinade. Reserve the extra marinade for the dressing and other grilling. Refrigerate the beef overnight or for at least one hour. Grill the flank on the barbecue at a high setting to medium rare. Chill.
Barbecue dressing:
1/2 cup mayonnaise 125 mL
1/4 cup sour cream 60 mL
2 tablespoons of 30 mL
barbecue marinade
2 tablespoons buttermilk 30 mL
1 teaspoon granulated 5 mL
garlic
1 teaspoon salt 5 mL
1/2 teaspoon pepper 2 mL
Stir together and refrigerate.
Barbecue beef salad
1 head romaine lettuce,
washed and torn
2 tomatoes cut in wedges
1 bell pepper cut into rings
1 can kidney beans, drained
and rinsed
1 cob corn, cook and remove
the kernels
2-3 red onion rings for garnish
Arrange the lettuce, tomatoes and peppers on plates. Sprinkle on the beans and corn. Drizzle the salads with the dressing. Cut the flank steak into thin slices and divide it between the plates. Garnish with onion rings and serve.
GO – A Culinary Community also contains stories about people interested in how our food is grown. It is published by Going Organic Network, www.goingorganic.ca. For more information, contact Pamela Irving at gocomms@telus.net or call 780-706-0482.
Betty Ann Deobald is a home economist from Rosetown, Sask., and one of four columnists comprising Team Resources. Send correspondence in care of this newspaper, Box 2500, Saskatoon, Sask., S7K 2C4 or contact them at team@producer.com.
