Let's Build A Better Salad!

[CaliforniaCook]

I'm a big fan of salads. Give me some fresh ingredients, produce etc., from the Farmers market or salad bar, & I'm in my 'element.' I run around the salad bar & pile on artichoke hearts, hearts of palm, beets, chunks of mozzarella - too many to list. I enjoy a cold salmon salad with dill etc. on a hot Summer's day. Layered pasta salads & red potatoes & green beans are another favorite. I think most folks think of a salad as lettuce & tomatoes, or the classics, i.e. Caprese, Spinach, Caesar, Cobb, Chef's, etc. Let's build a better salad - share your recipes/ideas.

[VeraBlue]

Perfect timing for the current Cooks' Challenge! Thanks for posting this!!

Let's see some pictures and recipes in the challenge thread, too!!

[CaliforniaCook]

I like the idea of merging the best of two worlds, i.e. topping warm baked pizza dough with a grilled or roasted chicken Caesar salad.

Or, this Gazpacho shrimp salad... sort of a cold roasted red pepper/tomato soup, with cold shrimp, croutons, etc. Some sliced or diced avocado on top is another idea.

http://www.bhg.com/recipe/salads/gazpacho-shrimp-salad/

[VeraBlue]

One of the best pizza sellers at my last position was the salad pizza. Warm crust, right from the oven, with a salad built on top of it. Oil, vinegar and grated romano cheese:applause::applause:

[CaliforniaCook]

Bump. With the temps soaring, wanted to revive the thread & see what salads you have made & enjoy.

[High Cheese]

I'm a fan of salads too.

Since I'm getting tomatoes in the garden pretty much daily, I've been making sliced tomato topped with salt, good Greek olive oil, a touch of balsamic, a touch of either dried oregano or herbs de provence, and fresh basil. Variations have cucumber or cucumber and sliced serrano chiles - both from the garden.

I like adding different things to lettuce-type salads. Things like grapes or dried cranberries/cherries.

The DW makes a great chicken dish by Ellie reiger (IIRC) which is a breaded chicken cutlet topped with romaine, parmesan and a lemon vinaigrette. It's awesome.

[High Cheese]

One of the best pizza sellers at my last position was the salad pizza. Warm crust, right from the oven, with a salad built on top of it. Oil, vinegar and grated romano cheese:applause::applause:

OOOH, what was the salad made of? That sounds like something for dinner this week!

[CaliforniaCook]

OOOH, what was the salad made of? That sounds like something for dinner this week!

A caesar salad, piled on a baked crust of choice. Add some grilled chicken strips. I like to spread some dijon mustard on the crust prior to baking, & top it off with grated fresh Parm regianno.

[VeraBlue]

Cheese, chopped leaf lettuce, diced tomato, black olives, thinly sliced red onions, grated cheese, S&P, oil and vinegar! It was such a delicious pizza!

We'd do a caesar salad pizza, greek salad pizza, roasted vegetable salad pizza. Point is, if you can call it salad and eat it on a plate, you can pile it on top of a warm pizza crust. Drizzle a little olive oil and sprinkle some grated romano cheese on the crust when it first comes out of the oven. Then, add your salad ingredients on top of that.

[luvs]

salad is a great lunch/dinner food in the summertime.
i love 'burgh salads- there's chix or a flank-type meat on them, sliced, & fries/mozzarella, provolone or both. oh, so simple & so very delicious!
there's a citrus/jicima & fennel salad from my Chefs' recipe packets that was fantastic, too.

[Sass Muffin]

When it comes to salads, I prefer there to be a lot of crunch going on.
Most always a salad will include nuts of some sort, whether it be cashews, peanuts, slivered almonds or pistachios, oh and bacon..
I like wedge salads too, something about slicing into the lettuce and such feels wonderfully meaty, even if you don't have meat with that meal.

[luvs]

i also love this chopped salad including candied bacon.

[CaliforniaCook]

salad is a great lunch/dinner food in the summertime.
i love 'burgh salads- there's chix or a flank-type meat on them, sliced, & fries/mozzarella, provolone or both. oh, so simple & so very delicious!
there's a citrus/jicima & fennel salad from my Chefs' recipe packets that was fantastic, too.

Yum, yum, luvs. Sounds delish. What's a Chef's packet? Can I have one too? :)

It was still very hot today. I picked up a crab & shrimp louis salad. Bet a homemade version would be great on a warm pizza crust w/ Thousand Island dressing... or maybe a salad nicoise or greek salad pizza. Lots of possibilities.

This is more of an appetizer, but I've been drooling over this Pear & prosciutto pizza with provolone, arugula & walnuts:

http://www.cookinglight.com/food/recipe-finder/cooking-light-best-recipes-2010-00400000062166/page7.html

[luvs]

that Chef packet is a packet of recipes that we review during pre-cooking lecture & after that we'd cook those; & then as we progressed, in thier advanced teaching there was also a list of foods we'd cooked, & if that iem was well-seasoned, & this & that, visually appealing, proper protocol followed in sanitation & that, presentation was accepted by Chef, Chef signed his approval of that food in that dagnabbin packet & dammit, my panic would WHOOSH!, take over until he or she nodded in approval or said my food items were damned-near spot-on & if i was given an inclination that my food was less less thn, i'd cook here so i could tweak kinda. so recipes in that & also those Chef approved of a student's cooking, we'd (they'd) get signatures, too, from them.

[High Cheese]

We went to a friends house for dinner one night and she made a basic garden salad (iceberg, red onion, cherry tomatoes, cucumber) with an oil/vinegar dressing. Only thing was she used dried oregano in the salad, quite a bit too. It was awesome! I never had a salad like that before. That's what gave me the idea to use Herbs De Provence in a salad.