Originally published on October 28, 2014
As many of you know, I have an issue with salad. I love them! I love the simplicity of sitting down to a big bowl of refreshing veggies and walking away completely satisfied. But I really don’t like lettuce all that much (especially the mostly-useless Iceberg lettuce.) But, I’ve found a solution. It’s spring mix, and if there’s a shred of actual lettuce in there, I don’t want to know about it. There is baby red chard, baby spinach, and a bunch of other good stuff that’s probably been given a miniature name as well, and I can’t get enough of it. While I’ve liked it for some time, I was reunited with my love of this mix when I returned to the restaurant biz, and the one in which I spend many of my days has a great house salad using spring mix and balsamic vinaigrette. Now, I have yet to make the vinaigrette at work so I had to sort of wing it when making my own, but it all turned out delicious and I’ve been happy to munch on it for the past few days.
Ingredients:
For the salad:
5 cups spring mix
1/2 cup radicchio, thinly sliced
1/2 cucumber, cut into a large dice
1 tomato, cut into a large dice
1/2 small red onion, thinly sliced
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, shaved
For the salad dressing:
1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon honey
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 shallot, roughly chopped
1 clove garlic, roughly chopped
Salt
Pepper
Directions:
1.) Place all the ingredients, except for the Parmesan cheese, into a large bowl.
2.) Place all the ingredients for the dressing into a blender and puree until smooth. Taste, adjust seasoning if necessary, and blend again if adding any salt and pepper.
3.) Pour a small amount of dressing over the salad and toss to mix. Add more if the salad doesn’t seem dressed enough, but make sure that the salad isn’t drenched with it. Sprinkle Parmesan cheese over top.
4.) Serve and enjoy!