A Plainly Elegant Salad by the Careless Cook

 

I admit I adore salads, with a big BUT! (only one T) Lettuce with bottled commercial dressing, carefully concocted to cover up every delicate, fresh flavor, is an insult to your taste buds and if you serve it to friends, you'll hear a loud choking noise and a call for 911, and hope it's not too late.

 

Doesn’t have to be that way. Lots of things you can do with olive oil and a vast array of vinegars, with many flavors. Red and while vinegars. Balsamic vinegar. Rice vinegar, plain and seasoned.  Think of vinaigrette as the baseline and be adventurous!

 

And when it comes to the salad itself, don’t think of “Dang this stuff is exotic and expensive,” think of what you’re got in your refrigerator, your pantry, and what you can do with what you’ve got.

 

First off, start with sipping a sturdy cup of red wine to stir the savage mind and bring it to boil over with a bursting of ideas. Tell no one what you’re doing. You’ll only confuse them. They don’t have your charming and efervescente palate. They probably won’t even pick a decent wine.

 

The Plainly Elegant Salad

 

Ingredients

 

¾  head of iceberg lettuce, cut or chopped as you wish (mine was coarsely chopped)

 

Handful of flat leaf parsley, coarsely chopped

 

2 stalks of celery, just a little thicker than thinly cut

 

½ red onion, peeled and thinly cut in slivers about half as long as your little finger

 

A handful of broken walnuts or another nut of your choosing

 

2 tangerines, peeled and pulled apart

 

A table spoon of Herbs de Provence. Look up Herbs de Provence if you’re curious. 

Short answer: Lots of herbs. I buy my packets from The Spice Lab on Amazon

 

Smoked salmon (I prefer Norwegian, that comes thinly sliced and smaller than your palm) Don’t savor smoked salmon? Try another type of smoked fish that’s not canned. Shrimp might work. I haven’t tried it.

 

A can of black beans, strained and rinsed. 

 

Salt and pepper to taste

 

Olives, if you wish

 

Next comes the dressing:

 

Red wine vinegar, seasoned rice vinegar, olive oil

 

Puttin’ It Teegether

 

The dressing.  I start with a few tablespoons of the oil and vinegars in a cereal sized bowl, taste and add more that suits me.

 

The Salad

 

In a fairly large salad dish, toss all the ingredients together except for the parsley, smoked salmon and herbs.

 

Cut the salmon to about half the size they come in the package, and use them to decorate a large salad dish. 

 

Scatter the parsley and herbs on top.

 

Voila!