On a hot night when I don't feel like cooking, a salad for supper is very appealing. The ingredients are flexible — I can add whatever I happen to have in the refrigerator. Salad greens (or other greens like kale or cabbage) are usually on my ingredient list for the base, but the night this salad was made, our fridge was sadly lacking in green things. A quick trip to Whole Foods for a box of salad mix solved the problem, and I was able to use up pantry items for the remaining ingredients.
In addition to the salad mix, the bowl contained four shredded carrots. a cucumber thinly sliced on the diagonal, halved grape tomatoes, Kalamata olives, and toasted chickpeas. Because the salad mix contained so many different greens like spinach, chard, frisse, romaine, red and green leaf lettuce, etc., it seemed much more complex than you'd think with the few extras I added.
The chickpeas were from a can — rinsed and drained well. They were toasted in a hot wok in a small amount of olive oil until they began to develop dark spots. The heat was turned off and the chickpeas were tossed with a good sprinkle of smoked Spanish paprika, a grind of pink salt (from Costco) and about a teaspoon of liquid smoke.
The dressing was made from tahini and umeboshi plum paste, similar to this one, but without lemon and sweetener, and with the addition of several finely shredded basil leaves from my garden. (I don't measure the ingredients when I make the dressing so I'm not sure exactly how much I made. Probably more than in the recipe.) It was a LOT of salad but we ate it all, and it was exactly the refreshing, yet filling, dinner I was craving. I meant to sprinkle on some pumpkin seeds, but that will have to wait until next time. Do you ever have "just a salad" for supper? What are your favorite ingredients?
No comments:
Post a Comment