Building the Perfect Salad

Somewhere around the new year my wife and I decided it was time to decrease our caloric intake at dinner in the hope of shrinking our waistlines.  In short, this meant less charcuterie and more salads.  At some point our evening meals became a collection of cured meats, cheese, nuts, and the occasional vegetable for added texture. 

Fat, fat, more fat, and brocollini... how I miss those days.

Salad was going to have to be the new salumi and this was only going to work if I could find a way to make it more interesting.  After much trail and error I settled on some variation of the following salad. 

The title of this post is a bit misleading, there is no "perfect salad."  Food is a highly subjective thing, what may be perfection for me may taste like Alpo to someone else.  Please keep that in mind and tweak to your own taste. 

What I am going to show you is a recipe for a salad that can be tweaked to work in a variety of situations.

This salad consists of three parts:

• The dressing
• Roasted bits
• Your lettuce of choice along with other uncooked fruits/veggies

The dressing consists of one part fresh lemon juice to three parts olive oil.  Regardless of size this ratio will remain constant.  Take 6-7 passes across the recently squeezed lemon with a zester.  Add salt liberally to taste, I tend to add quite a bit as it adds a great deal of flavor.  Wisk with a fork until the mixture turns translucent.  Poor the dressing in your salad bowl and let sit, be stingy as you can always add more later. 

I think roasting adds a great deal of texture to any dish, especially a salad.  Preheat the oven and pour some combination of walnuts, pecans, sweet or red onions, peppers, or maybe even a little pancetta.  You can even rough cut some day old bread and make rustic croutons.  Toss with olive oil and kosher salt, roast until the nuts have turned dark, the onions and peppers have caramelized, or the croutons are crispy.  Remove from the oven and let cool. 

From here chop your lettuce, tomatoes, avocado, cucumbers, or anything else that strikes your fancy.  Since we are entering the end of the growing season in the Pacific Northwest this ends up being whatever looks ripe in my garden.  Just before dinner is served combine all ingredients and toss until the dressing you have placed in the bottom of the bowl is evenly dispersed throughout.  It is important to not build the salad too early as the lemon juice will break down the lettuce and the whole operation will turn mushy.     

Viola!

You can tweak this recipe to suit the type of food you are serving.  With pasta add fresh oregeno, thyme, and a splash of balsamic to the dressing to give it more of an italian feel.  With tacos add cumin, fresh cilantro, and substitute lime for lemon which adds the right amount of spice for Mexican food dishes. 

The best part of all this is I have done away with the dozen bottles of dressing that took up space in my fridge at any given time. 

~Aaron.