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A salad a day WILL keep the doctor away!
Yes, I swear, I do actually eat two salads a day every day (well, almost every day). Unless I’m rushed or pressed for time, I will always include one salad during lunch and one at dinner time.
I really love salads. Yes, I do eat them because they are healthy, but there are many healthy things I’ve never come around to eating on a regular basis.
A salad is fresh and it’s the perfect way in my opinion to end my meals.
When it comes to my salad recipes, I usually let my imagination dictate the outcome. I also take a cue from season fruits/veggies and leftovers in my fridge to create tasty salad.
Thanks to mesclun mixes and spring mixes, which started to be actively cultivated in California, but are now available in pretty much all grocery stores in Canada, the U.S., the U.K. and most European countries, there is NO reason to buy tasteless iceberg lettuce and try to force-feed yourself in the name of good health.
Did you know that mesclun is a French word meaning “mixture” originating from Provence, where gathering a variety of young, field greens has been a rite of spring for centuries. Today, the mix is cultivated, not wild. Heck, I didn’t know that and I was once a French food expert! I was dead certain the whole mesclun crave started in super-healthy California!
Mesclun mixes are a lovely mélange of baby leaves which include romaine, red and green oak leaf with sharply indented leaves, red and frizzy Lollo Rossa, radicchio, frisee (curly endive), frilly green leaf Tango and Redina with its crinkly, red leaf.
The great thing with the mesclun mix is that it’s bursting with so many different flavours and it makes salad time an exciting time! It is also packed with beta carotene, vitamin C, folate, calcium and iron.
Unless I’m making a Caesar salad, I now use a mesclun mix as my base for any salad I make.
While surfing the online pages Food & Wine, I discovered a whole list of new salad recipes that are perfect for this time of the year.
The great thing about these salads is that they are main courses, so they include protein and if you combine that with some hearty bread or noodles for the Asian inspired recipes, you’ve got yourself a great meal. Another great thing is that these salads have been created by some really talented chefs!
Here are some of my favourite salad recipes that were featured in the Food & Wine profile:
1) BLT Salad with Blue Cheese: Chef Michael Schwartz has really shaken things up with this recipe!
2) Coronation Chicken Salad with Mangoes and Almonds: Did you know that toasted almonds were invented to honour the crowning of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953? Check out how chef Tom Aikens integrates them in this tasty recipe!
3) Arugula Salad with Prosciutto and Oyster Mushrooms: Chef Fabio Trabocchi has blended three of my favourite foods together in this super delicious salad!
4) Grilled Skirt Steak with Fregola-Orange Salad: Steak, oranges and salad? Yum!
5) Grilled Chicken and Watercress Salad with Canadian Bacon: I like this recipe a lot because it allows me to find a new way to dress up watercress. I know some might say “bacon”, but Canadian bacon has a fraction of the fat of regular bacon! Go Canada!!!
6) Adler & Fertig’s Knife and Fork Grilled Vegetable Salad: This is a fantastic salad that mixes grilled vegetables!
You’ll find all 15 delicious Food & Wine salad recipes that you can try today: 15 hearty main-course salads
Photo by neona_
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