Rescuing Greens and Other Ways to Avoid Food Waste

Here’s a good tip I spotted on The Kitchn. When your salad greens are starting to go bad, bring them back to life by sauteing with garlic and oil. Could be a nice light lunch with an omelet.

There are a lot of other handy for avoiding food waste here.

 No-Waste Tip: Sauté the Last of the Salad Greens | Apartment Therapy The Kitchn

Just in Time for the Farmers Market: Mixed Summer Salad

This bistro-inspired salad is designed to take advantage of all the lovely greens and herbs that are in season right now, at your local farmers market or possibly even in your garden, if the deer haven’t gotten to it first. I used a mixture of greens I bought and herbs and arugula from the garden. Any combination of salad greens will work, but look for the tender baby greens to get the full wow factor.

The rest of the salad is fairly straightforward, but with salads, simplest is best. This was delicious alongside smoked turkey and a potato salad for an early summer evening meal on the patio.

Mixed Summer Salad

Time to make: ~30 minutes, including time to boil the eggs and make the croutons
Yields: 8-10 servings

• Selection of mixed baby greens and herbs, washed and dried — I didn’t measure this out, just filled up my large salad bowl with greens. Be creative in the selection, and include lots of fresh herbs, such as basil, flat-leaf parsley and arugula.
• 3 carrots, peeled

• 1 generous tsp. Dijon mustard
• 4 tbsp. good-quality red wine vinegar
• 6 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste

• 2 eggs, hard-boiled
• 2-3 cups day-old French bread, cubed
• olive oil and coarse salt for the croutons

Julienne or shred the carrot using a mandoline or food processor — you’re aiming for fine shreds. Toss with the greens and herbs in a large salad bowl.

Whisk together the mustard, vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper. Toss the dressing with the mixed greens until the leaves are just glistening. (You may not need all of the dressing. Reserve the remainder for passing at the table.)

Peel the hard-boiled eggs and chop small. Toss with the greens.

Heat a generous amount of olive oil over medium-high in a large skillet. Add the bread cubes and sprinkle with coarse salt. Brown the cubes on all sides, stirring frequently, until crisp. Add to the salad and serve immediately.

Note: All of the salad components can be prepared ahead of time. However, do not dress the salad or add the egg and croutons until just before serving.

How to Make a Simple Green Salad

Many of you will wonder why I am even bothering to post a recipe for a green salad. But I think those readers who are newly arrived in the kitchen will find these guidelines helpful. This recipe is easy to memorize and customize. Once you have it down, you will be able to bring a healthy, delicious salad to the table in less than 5 minutes.

The keyword, of course, is healthy. Salads are supposed to be good for you but all too often are loaded with hidden fats and calories. The culprit is salad dressing. Bottled salad dressings are loaded with fats and, worse, sugar, plus all kinds of chemical preservatives that I wouldn’t want to put into my body. Once I started making my own salad dressings, the stuff from the grocery store tasted awful to me, primarily because of the added sugar. When you make the dressing yourself, you control how much fat — and therefore how many calories — you add.

A good green salad actually requires very little dressing, just enough to lightly “dress” the greens. It also doesn’t need very much in the way of extra ingredients. You can make a perfectly satisfying salad with mixed greens alone or by adding a handful of an accent ingredient. Don’t feel like you have to toss in all the contents of the vegetable crisper.

Green Salad

Yields: as many servings as you need
Time to make: ~5 minutes

What you need:

• 1½ cups salad greens (about 1 handful) per person
• good quality extra-virgin olive oil
• vinegar of your choice
• salt and pepper
• additions as desired (see below)

1. Wash and dry the greens; a salad spinner comes in very handy at this point
2. Tear the greens into bite-sized pieces if they are not “baby” greens
3. Add the greens to the salad bowl and drizzle with a small amount of olive oil
4. Toss until the leaves are just lightly coated and glistening; they should not be soggy
5. Sprinkle with vinegar, salt and pepper
6. Toss gently and taste; add more of anything until the taste is to your liking

Notes: If you like, choose 1 or 2 additional items to toss in. My favorite additions are home-made croutons (keep reading), cherry tomatoes, hard-boiled egg, toasted nuts or crumbled cheese.

What, you say you don’t know how to make croutons? Nothing could be simpler.

Croutons

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees
2. Remove the crusts from preferably day-old bread, such as French, Italian, sourdough or peasant bread, and cut the bread into cubes
3. Toss the cubes with olive oil and salt, seasoning, herbs and/or garlic to your tastes
4. Brown in the oven until crisped, 8-10 minutes
5. Store in an airtight container up to 5 days

Want to take it a step further? Try making a Vinaigrette.

For even more tips on how to make a great salad, see this article by James Peterson.

Here’s a reference to the different kinds of salad greens at Cook’s Thesaurus.

Caesar Salad at Home

Probably my favorite salad to get when eating out is the Caesar Salad. When made well, a Caesar Salad is crispy, crunchy and salty (due to the Parmesan) with a dressing that is creamy, tangy, garlicky and puckery. When made poorly, a Caesar Salad is a mess of lettuce covered in glop, but I try to avoid those restaurants. Still, I was daunted by making a Caesar Salad at home. I didn’t really want to mess about with raw eggs and anchovies on a weeknight. So I came up with this pseudo-Caesar recipe, which — even though it’s not authentic — captures for me everything a Caesar Salad should be and comes together in about 5 minutes.

Caesar Salad

Serves: 2
Time to make: ~5 minutes

To make the dressing, process together:

• 3 tbsp. olive oil
• 1½ tbsp. lemon juice
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• ½ tsp. Dijon mustard
• ½ tsp. anchovy paste (can be found in the specialty or Italian foods aisle)
• 1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
• plenty of freshly ground pepper

The salad itself is a snap. Just combine:

• freshly torn romaine lettuce
• croutons — I make mine by cubing and toasting day-old bread until dried out
• Parmesan — shave it with a vegetable peeler

If I’m feeling really naughty, I might toss in some cherry tomatoes, hard-boiled egg, leftover roasted chicken… Somebody stop me!