I love a salad that feels like a meal, but isn’t so full of heavy ingredients that it defeats the point of eating a salad. Salads served in fast food chains often have this problem; it takes extreme editing of the empty calories before digging in. My older daughter refers to this as ‘food surgery,’ and she meticulously picks out anything she considers unhealthy (or that she simply doesn’t like). There’s nothing to edit from this salad.
The recipe for this pickled chopped salad is adapted from a new cookbook that I love: Food 52 Genius Recipes. If you aren’t familiar with this blog, you should have a look, because they put up great recipes, provided by chefs and cooks who are doing unconventional and brilliant things in the kitchen. I immediately fastened on to this recipe, which was created by Chef Michel Nischan of The Dressing Room, because it looked like an entrée I would make for myself for dinner when my husband is traveling. I love it because the quick pickling of some of the vegetables gives the salad a clean flavor boost which, combined with the almonds and goat cheese, balance the vinegary base. I also like it because it makes great leftovers, and so it’s really like making dinner and lunch for the next day. I used more vinegar than the recipe initially called for, to make the acidic taste pop a bit, and I used coarse black salt instead of sea salt to provide a bit of visual contrast. Oh – and what really finishes this salad off beautifully is a great piece of French baguette. Heaven!
Pickled Chopped Salad
Adapted from Food52 Genius Recipes, by Chef Michel Nischan
Serves: 6
Prep time: 30 minutes
Ingredients
- 1 ½ cups white wine vinegar
- 3 stalks of celery, chopped into ¼ inch pieces
- 2 carrots, peeled and chopped into 1/4 inch pieces
- 1 red bell pepper, cored, seeded and chopped into ¼ inch pieces
- 3 small seedless cucumbers, peeled and chopped into ¼ inch pieces
- 1 cup radicchio, well-chopped
- 1 cup baby arugula, well-chopped
- 1 cup cabbage, well-chopped
- 1 apple, peeled and chopped into ¼ inch pieces
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
- black salt and pepper to taste
- 1 cup soft goat cheese crumbled
- ½ cup almond slivers
Directions
- Pour the vinegar into a pan and simmer at medium heat.
- Add celery and carrots and remove from heat, allowing vinegar to cool.
- When the mixture is cool, add red pepper, and cover and store in the refrigerator until cold.
- Strain the carrots, celery and red pepper out of the vinegar.
- In a large bowl, mix together cucumber, apple, arugula, radicchio and cabbage, and add the carrots, celery and red pepper. Add 1/2 cup of the reserved vinegar to the olive oil, and pour over vegetables.
- Season with salt and pepper to taste. Add goat cheese and almonds and mix well. Serve with a good, fresh bread as accompaniment.
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