I wasn’t sure if I was going to post this salad or not, but late last night, I decided to go ahead with it. It’s not the most complex salad in the world, but it sure it tasty and fun to eat. Perhaps its simplicity will be its selling point.
Basically, we’ve got a variety of lettuce with some chopped up hard-boiled egg and olives as a topping. Personally, I think the most special part of the salad is the vinaigrette. It consists of balsamic vinegar, sweet white wine, garlic salt and olive oil. This is kind of a “throw together” salad because you can use whatever greens you have on hand as the base. The toppings and vinaigrette go with pretty much anything.
Since I decided to share this post with you just last night, I’m afraid my photography is lacking. I hate it when this happens, but I was in a rush. I did want to get something to you though, so here you are.
Ingredients
Serves: 4
For the Salad
8 Young Dandelion Leaves
4 Ounces Greens
1/3 Cup Finely Chopped Onions
2 Hard-Boiled Eggs, Chopped
1 Cup Pitted Black Olives, Chopped
For the Vinaigrette
3 Tablespoons Balsamic Vinegar
2 Tablespoons Sweet White Wine
1/2 Teaspoon Salt
1 Garlic Clove, Minced
6 Tablespoons Extra-Virgin Olive Oil
Step-by-Step Instructions
I’d like to thank Carlo Bernasconi and Christian Teubner for their awesome resource called The Complete Italian Cookbook. This is yet another wonderful recipe pulled from that.
Prepare the Salad
It’s garden season up here in Maine and I’ve got quite a few varieties of lettuce growing out in my back yard. I went out last night and picked a few and washed them all up in my salad spinner. I even included some basil leaves, just for fun. The original recipe calls for dandelion leaves and sorrel, but unfortunately for me, neither of those were available yesterday. I think some baby greens would be suffice as well as a variety of herbs.
Anyway, after you clean up your greens, divide them into a few different bowls. Then, divide the chopped up hard-boiled eggs, onion and olives between the bowls as well.
Prepare the Vinaigrette
In a medium sized bowl, add the balsamic vinegar, white wine, salt, garlic and olive oil. Whisk these ingredients well.
Plate & Serve
Spoon the vinaigrette dressing over the salad in the bowls and serve. Enjoy!
I told you this recipe was rather simple. There’s something about the dressing that I really like though. Lately, I’ve been substituting sweet white wine for the dry white wine that’s called for in so many different recipes and I’ve been loving it. That’s what I did here and it worked out well. Let’s just say it made an impression and that’s why I went ahead and shared this recipe.
PS – Boxed white wine is perfect for this sort of thing.
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