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I love salads. As a matter of fact, sometimes I feel like eating pure salad and adding something like meat or fish to it, just to have a pure salad meal. This recipe is though about a salad I use as a side serving with nearly all my evening meals, but very varieted with the ingredients. Some people just love to have me making my salads on their dinner parties. In the UK I made two salads to the family BBQ party we had. Several other family parties here in Norway have also had my salad added. And as we can't get as many vegetables in Norway as I was used to in Holland, I simply have replaced it with making a salad with every meal (except for when we eat pancakes ofcourse).
Ingredients:
1 red paprika
1 cucumber
pepper
salt
optional: 1 iceberg or a chinese cabbage if you prefer that
1 red apple (pinklady, red delicious, jonagold, fuji, braeburn, royal gala, Jazz or perhaps you have one local grown type, sweet type at least)
optional: 1 yellow apple (golden delicious, sweet type at least)
optional: 1 green apple (granny smith, sour type)
optional: 1-2 boiled eggs, peeled
optional: Cider vinegar
optional: Olive oil
optional: your type of dressing (balsamico-garlic, french, thousand island, etc) Step 1. Cutting
Wash your vegetables and fruits well. Nowadays farmers use a lot of chemicals. Unless you bought them from an eco-farm ofcourse.
Cut the red paprika in 0,5cm slices, remove the insides. Then cut the slices in small blocks. Add them to the saladbowl.
The cucumber I usually eat with it's peel. But you can take it off as well. Then I cut it into small blocks as well.
Apples also in slices and then in blocks. I wrote several apples in the ingredients list. I usually use only the red ones, but at certain times you can variate and add all types, giving a nice mixture of different tastes.
Add them all to the bowl.
Now if you want eggs as well, slice them in slices with an egg slicer or use your knife.
Adding iceberg or chinese cabbage is also optional, because you don't always want to add it. Sometimes a nice sommer salad just has to have the fruits and the paprika and cucumber in it while leaving the iceberg out.
As for the iceberg, I usually take a few leaves off and wash them. Then I shake the water off and break it in pieces with my hands. An other option is to take a knife and cut slices off the iceberg itself. Then wash these pieces and add them to the mix. As for chinese cabbage, the nice watery juicy leafs, I take off the leaves and then slice it up in 1cm strips over the width of the leaf. Step 2. Seasoning / dressing
Ofcourse you can also leave the dressing out and serve it on the table with a dressing for the guests to sprinkle themselves, but I usually make just a good choice of dressing and serve it that way. I usually season the salad with a little salt and pepper/lemonpepper. Don't forget to mix it well together.
As for seasoning I use either olive oil and cider vinegar or a ready made dressing such as Balsamico-oil-vinegar-garlic mixture from Idun. I'm sure there are many other types of dressings you can use for your salad in your country as well.
Perhaps for the more summer taste of a summer salad I suggest the cider vinegar and olive oil solution, as it gives the salad extra freshness.
Whether you season, use a dressing over it or not... make sure you don't forget to mix everything well before serving it. Step 3. Serving
As I said.. you can serve a salad as a side dish with your meal, your BBQ or you can serve it on its own as a single meal. Enjoy! |
