a salad can be a thing of beauty
I decided to try my hand at making a chopped salad. We had a friend over for dinner last week, and I had already decided on making my famous burgers (with bacon and cheese right in the patty! let me know if you want more details) but I needed to fancy it up with a side dish. Salad is always good with burgers, but can I just say that I hate hate hate leafy salads? I lose all my foodie cred here, perhaps, but I just have never been good at observing the nuances between different types of lettuce. They all just collectively bore the crap out of me. Whenever I eat leafy salads I am slightly disappointed (unless the dressing is awesome), and I inevitably make a mess with a piece of lettuce the size of my fist somehow tucked into the bowl. No thank you.
Chopped salads are great because everything is chopped to a relatively uniform size, meaning you get a different mouthful of awesome in every bite (and no wrestling with unruly oversized lettuce leaves). For this salad, I used radicchio, avacado, cucumber, tomatoes, carrots, shallots, and dillweed. For a crunch, I added toasted walnuts (roll ’em in olive oil, sprinkle with salt, and pop ’em under the broiler — watch them like a hawk, and take them out the second the colour turns). I made a very very simple dressing of olive oil, balsamic vinegar (2:1 oil to vinegar ratio), chopped garlic, a squeeze of lemon juice, salt, pepper, and a pinch of sugar. Toss the salad in the dressing and leave it to marinate for a good long time (at least half an hour). The results are simply splendid. It also makes a great main meal with some feta cheese mixed in and a nice crusty white bread on the side.
a food and book (and book and food) blog 
December 20, 2009 at 1:50 pm
Interesting! I have recently rejected lettuce in general, except maybe in Caesar salads and I love chopped salad.
December 20, 2009 at 2:27 pm
I think you can have so much more fun with flavour and texture in a chopped salad!
December 21, 2009 at 10:50 am
“I had already decided on making my famous burgers (with bacon and cheese right in the patty! let me know if you want more details)”
Of COURSE!
Although I am still fond of spinach for salads.
December 21, 2009 at 6:15 pm
My burgers:
– 1 pound ground sirloin or extra lean beef
– artisan cheddar, cut into small cubes
– about 8 strips of bacon, chopped and cooked until crispy (leave to cool)
– 1 egg
– 1 packet onion soup mix
Mix ingredients together with your hands (start with the beef, egg, and soup mix before adding the cheese and bacon). Form into patties — I would get 4 patties from 1 lb of beef. Then BBQ, broil, or pan fry! You get these amazing bursts of cheese goodness that are amazing (but you need a really good cheddar for the flavour to hold up against the strength of the beef).